I felt compelled to reflect back on a posting I wrote in March 2006 about trading on Wall Street. With the wild swings in the market experienced last week, one of the key questions seems clearly to be how long does it take for regulatory changes to get in sync with market and technological changes? The trading irregularities that occurred are viewed with alarm by many. Should we be shocked that such a think could have happened? I don't think so. Some will say that highly automated trading should not be allowed. In fact legislation was lintroduced to ban it. Maybe each trade should be artificially restricted to take X minutes or seconds or no trade can exceed X shares in Y minutes? Maybe trades should be approved by the government? Maybe trades should be on paper? Reminds me of the Luddites trying to destroy mechanized looms and many in the know expressing considerable resistance toward Johann Gutenberg's press.
Maybe what we need is more "Net Attitude". What we are being confronted with is not a technical problem and it is not a regulatory problem. It is a vision problem. Leaders not seeing and embracing technology. Advances in technology can not be stopped -- they have to be embraced, understood, and planned for. I would not expect leaders in the congress or regulatory bodies to be techno geeks but I would expect them to be tech aware and to bring in the right experts to help them see a vision of what is ahead and to thereby enable the leaders to lead in a more progressive fashion and not hide behind political statements that may appeal to various niches. Unfortunately, we are seeing time after time that leaders in key places do not seem to have a clue as to what is happening or is possible in the technological world.
The No Fly List is an even more sobering and dramatic example. The TSA told the airlines that when a high priority name is added to the list the airlines have to look at the list within 24 hours. Twenty-four hours? After the recent terrorist act they reduced it to two hours. Two hours? Amazon can process your order or banks can move your money in fractions of a second but a potentially life-threatening addition to an important list needs two hours to be communicated? Have they heard of email or text messages or tweets? This lack of awareness and technical thinking combined with their staffs leaking to the press an analysis of what the terrorist did wrong and thereby providing a checklist for how to do better next time does not make one comfortable about our security in the future.
One more example makes the point. A senior political leader being interviewed this morning was asked the following. When a person buys a ticket a one way ticket to Pakistan a few hours before the flight and pays for it with cash should that send up a red flag? The politican said "I don't know if that can be done". I am sure he doesn't know what a tweet is either.
March 9, 2006
While driving to Reading, Pennsylvania, earlier this week to visit Maestro Sidney Rothstein for a conducting lesson (more on Beethoven's Prometheus Overture later), I tuned in to Bloomberg radio. The reporter was interviewing John Thain, CEO of the New York Stock Exchange (NYX), which had just started its first day as a public company. The interviewer asked about the possibility of the Exchange becoming "all electronic" to which Mr. Thain responded that the exchange is a very people oriented process, that the exchange is a very people oriented process, that people are required to balance the many buy and sell orders received and that the human element is essential and "that's not going to change".
Mr. Thain's words immediately rang a bell with me. It sounded like ten years ago when the CEO's of banks and brokerage firms (and Microsoft) were saying that the Internet was interesting but that it would never be used for banking or securities trades. Over the ensuing years financial services companies ran print advertising campaigns saying how important brokers were and how they provide advice from people you can trust. After the denial phase was over the firms couldn't get into online trading fast enough and now Barron's does in depth analysis of which securities firms have the best web-based trading and investment advice capabilities.
Computing power and networking speeds are accelerating rapidly beyond the already amazing capabilities of today. Computational biology has made it possible to decode the human genome years ahead of the projected time. Human proteins are being designed that may provide cures for cancer. A supercomputer defeated the world's greatest chess player. Two robots are driving around the surface of Mars under computer control from Earth. But buy and sell orders for securities can not be modeled, optimized, and matched by computers? Is it possible that the financial services leaders are once again benighted about what is in front of them? Could it be that the jeopardy of profit margins and bonuses could blind them from seeing what is ahead?
Go Figure, Internet Technology, Net Attitude, People, Public Policy May 9, 2010 05:16 PM
Friday, May 7, 2010
iPad - Part 4: What You Can Not Do
There are many things you can do with the iPad and we are only at the beginning -- but there are some things you can't do. Although I have been accused in jest that my enthusiasm for the iPad makes some wonder if I am on the Apple payroll. I am indeed very bullish about the iPad but this story is to highlight some of the things that -- at this stage -- you can do or not do very well with the iPad. Will the iPad replace the laptop? At some point, yes, but at this point I am writing this post on my ThinkPad (running Ubuntu Linux with the Google Chrome browser and WordPress).
There is a reason why I am unable to write the story on the iPad. Inhiibitor #1 for the iPad is the browser.Steve Jobs has said that Safari is the world's best browser and the iPad was introduced with no other choice. Many people think that Internet Explorer is the #1 browser -- some think it is the only browser. Let's start with some facts. In 2005 IE had 65% market share -- even though many people, myself included, think it is the worst of all browsers. Fast forward to March 2010. IE8 had 15% share, IE7 had 11%, and IE6 was at 9%. The total for IE was 35%. Firefox was 46%. Google Chrome (my primary browser) has gained every month since it was introduced in 2008 and now stands with a 12% share. Apple Safari is at 4% and Opera Software at 2%. I think Safari is a good browser but not a great browser. Perhaps it will become great if Apple continues to invest in it but based on the numbers they have a long way to go. When it comes to the iPhone and iPad the Safari share is 100% since that is all that is offered. One exception is that Opera Mini is now available on the iPhone. If they can get an iPad specific version approved that would be nice. So one thing you can't do with the iPad is surf all the sites you can surf on the desktop. I have found a number of sites that do not work properly with Safari. That is what forced me to be writing this story on the ThinkPad.
Even if Safari worked flawlessly with WordPress and MovableType, writing any significant blog post (or other document) is not as productive as using a PC or laptop with a large flat screen. I typically have a dozen tabs open on my flat panel -- gmail, iGoogle, calendar, a few spreadsheet projects, WordPress, wikiPedia, etc. It is easy to copy paste links and info from other pages into the blog post. You could do it on iPad but it is a lot more tedius.
I also have discovered that a number of iPad apps that have come from the PC or Mac world are not inclusive. For example eBay on the iPad is very nice but there are things like adding a reputation or preparing an invoice for the buyer, etc. that are not there. The Apple calendar, contacts, and mail applications are very nice and freshly updated from the iPhone versions. They are a joy to use but they do not have the full functionality of the PC versions -- can't send to groups in gmail, can't add group designations in contacts, can't add text message reminders in calendar. I use usps.com to do a mailing and stamps.com to mail packages. They both require printing. The iPad can't print. Although it can handle pdf files in emails, it doesn't support creation of pdf's which is what both the mailing apps do. I did find one iPad app called PrintCentral that boasted that it enables the iPad to print without installing any printer software on the iPad. I bought the app ($9.99) and then found out that it does require software to be installed on your PC and then that enables the iPad to print to any printer on your LAN. Not even as easy as it sounds however, and to use it your PC or laptop has to be on and connected to the LAN. Handling of files, generally, is not a strong suit for the iPad. The file system is closed so you have no visible directories, you can not detach attachments and put them somewhere (except for pictures). Everything is handled through iTunes which is clearly not optimized for file sharing. I expect this to get easier as clever app developers find ways to get around the various impediments. GoodReader for example is a great tool for managing PDFs. You can access the GoodReader app from a PC, create folders on the iPad from your PC, and upload PDF files into the folders. This gives you a repository for documents to read offline on the iPad. I use it mostly for board papers and find it extremely valuable. Others at the conference tables are attracted to the idea -- I should get an Apple commission!
Meanwhile I finished reading The Great Bridge by David McCullough using the iPad iBook reader. What a great book. After reading a few books on the iPad I can confidently repeat my enthusiasm for the Kindle. The light weight really makes a difference. It is also superior when reading out in the sunny weather we have been having lately. For now at least the optimum reading for me is to use the Kindle app on the iPad while on the treadmill and x-trainer or at the reading stand in front of my easy chair, to use the Kindle on iPhone while in a supermarket line or killing a few minutes at the train station, and the Kindle while curled up in bed. Once the iPad iBook novelty and fascination of the curling page flips with text on the back of the pages wears off, one thinks about the reason you read books -- the content, not the page flips. the Kindle wins hands down -- for now. On Wings Of Eagles was recently released on Kindle and that has been my read this week. Ken Follett doesn't write much non-fiction and he did a spectacular job of taking a factual story of the EDS rescue in Iran in 1979 sound like a legitimate novel. One can't wonder how the mission would have gone differently if iPhones had existed back then.
Bottom line, the iPad is a great device and I love it. It can't do everything -- no camera, no phone, no usb keys, weak printing and file handling -- but it can do almost everything. And, it is very personal. You show it to friends and family but you don't let it out of your site. You let them play with it, but not much. It contains your personal information of all kinds. It knows where you are. In time, it will be watching you and you will be watching others with it. iPad stories on patrickWeb
Other gadget related stories on patrickWeb
Gadgets, Internet Technology, Mobile, Personal Computing, iPhone May 7, 2010 10:26 PM
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
iPad - Part 3: Other Reading
Many of us have weighed in on the various aspects of e-books and e-readers. The jury will be out for quite awhile as the publishers, Apple, Sony, Google, Lenovo, Dell, and numerous others refine their strategy for what goes into a book, how it is displayed, and how it is priced. While the book war heats up, there are other dimensions of the e-readers to consider.
Reading magazines and newspapers on the Kindle can be quite convenient -- especially if you travel a lot -- but I can't say it is enjoyable or even natural. On the iPad reading magazines and newspapers is enjoyable and increasingly will seem the natural way to read them. The New York Times got good press at the launch of the iPad but I find it weak. The WSJ, however, is quite good. Easy to navigate and you get the full "paper" as it was published in the morning plus updates during the day. The ads are annoying and it doesn't take long to realize that it takes two swipes to go to the next page if the page you are leaving is an ad. I would rather not have the ads but having them is the publishers only hope of making money which they need if we want good journalists. The NPR and BBC news apps are pretty good also. The Zinio ipad app is home to a large number of magazines. A few are free. Pricing is reasonable -- Popular Mechanics, for example, is $7.99 for tweleve issues. Flipping Zinio pages is smooth and natural. Bottom line is that reading newspapers and magazines on the iPad is a pleasing and natural experience. My friend Jim Kollegger at Genesys Partners says "the iPad will do for publishing what the ATM did for cash".
Aside from books, magazines, and newspapers there is an infinite amount of material to read on the iPad. Even the uninitiated organizations of the world are distributing their documents in PDF format. Not my long term favorite format but it is far better than receiving a doc file that wants to open some "bloatware" to be read. In cases where I must receive a fax I have it sent to my efax number and it shows up in the gmail inbox as a PDF. When checking out of a hotel I ask the desk to fax a copy of my room bill "to my office, no cover sheet required". The PDF in my inbox can then be archived or used for reimbursement purposes. For more significant PDF's that are important for future reference or even a board packet for a meeting I use the GoodReader iPad app to store and read the files. I would prefer that things were synced in the cloud rather than iTunes but the process of moving PDF's from my ThinkPad to the iPad over the home LAN is easy now that I have done it quite a few times. The storage of the iPad allows nearly unlimited documents for most of us and having the documents "local" is nice for travel plus partaking of the great zoom and pinch features lets you have whatever the optimum view for you may be. This is especially important for charts and graphs.
In preparation for a board meeting this past week, I received the normal FedEx package containing the agenda and board papers. It was 38 pages, and including the binder clip, weighed a half-pound. I emailed the person organizing the meeting and asked for a PDF. After saving the attachment on the ThinkPad and uploading it over the LAN to the GoodReader app on the iPad I was good to go. Both reading the papers in a comfy chair the day before the meeting and following as needed at the conference room table were a welcome approach compared to fumbling with the paper. I reminded some people about the time, cost, and environmental impact of the old approach. In theory the same thing could be done with the iPhone but I have to admit that it is difficult with tabular information and graphs. It has certainly been feasible with the laptop but then you have to worry about battery life and the bulk of the device on the table. The iPad fills the bill really well. Another handy document reading tool on the iPad is the Memeo Connect Reader which syncs your Google Docs folders to the iPad app. This is really nice when you are on an airplane or somewhere that doesn't have a WiFi signal.
And then there is reading what bloggers have to say and the thousands of news feeds. I am using both NewsRack and Early Edition on the iPad. Both are evolving, listening to feedback and continuously improving their products. You can read patrickWeb, BusinessWeek, The Economist, Engadget or any of the millions of feeds that are out there. You can add new feeds on the iPad or use Google Reader on the desktop and have the feeds automatically sync to your iPad reader. The size and clarity of the iPad makes it quite enjoyable to scan through the feeds and read stories of interest. Another nice iPad app is the Wiki (squared). You enter a word of interest, read the article about it just like an encyclopedia but then follow the links and read to your heart's content. A real bargain for 99 cents.
How about creating documents? There are more tools to read than there are to write but there are some incredibly sophisticated writing tools available on the iPad. Apple itself features Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. I was skeptical about creating and manipulating a spreadsheet on the iPad but with Apple Numbers and no training I have learned how to do it. It is mostly intuitive. What surprised me is the breadth and depth of the functionality. I have a couple of other favorite iPad tools for writing. First is the CarbonFin Outliner. I have always liked outliners as a way to organize thoughts for a meeting or discussion agenda. You can add bullets and sub-bullets and then move them up or down or promote or demote them in the outline. The Outliner is available on a web site and you can sync your outlines. That enables you to make a change on any computer or on the iPad and everything is synced. This is the beauty of the Cloud and the way all applications should be (and will be). I have been using the Outliner for more than a year with the iPhone and I can highly recommend it. Another nice app is Things. Aside from being way overpriced ($19.99), Things provides a well organized way to capture your to do's in buckets -- Today, Next, Scheduled for a specific date, Someday, and Projects. As things get completed or moved around they show up in the Logbook. I have tried dozens of task list managers over the years and end up using scraps of paper and email as the dominant tools. Maybe Things, with the personal relationship people will have with their iPad, will make it a winner. I especially like the "Someday" category as a way to capture those things you think of that you want to do but you know you are not going to do anytime soon.
Meanwhile I am still reading The Great Bridge by David McCullough. Among my friends and recent acquaintances it seems I am the only one who has not read this great epic book. Both the political and engineering complexities encountered in the project are mind boggling. Even though I can't seem to find the time to finish this great book in a timely manner, I am getting used to reading on the iPad.
Gadgets, Home Automation, Internet Technology, Media, Music, Personal Computing, WiFi, iPhone April 27, 2010 09:30 PM
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
iPad Thoughts
I confess -- the doorway did not get out of my sight for the entire day yesterday. I had placed my order early in the morning on March 12 and when the first tranch of thousands of iPads left China for Louisville, KY and then to Orlando and on to Daytona and then onto a big brown truck, I did not want to be the unreliable part of the distribution scheme that Apple had planned with precision. By 4 PM the doubts were arising but at 5 PM my iPhone rang and it was the UPS driver at the front door with an iPad in his hands. Here are the thoughts about the new tablet so far.
Gadgets, Home Automation, Internet Technology, Media, Music, Personal Computing, WiFi, iPhone April 21, 2010 10:05 AM
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
iPad - Part 2: Book Reading
If the financial analysts are right, Apple may soon have a market capitalization of more than $250 billion -- that is one quarter of a trillion dollars. Apple stock is up seven-fold in the past five years. People were skeptical of the stock price then and some are now but it is quite possible that the iPhone and the iPad have changed the game for the company in a very positive way. The "spillover" effect is that Mac sales are also booming and half of the buyers are first-time Mac buyers. Can Apple sustain such a high growth rate? The world is a big place and more than half of the iPhone sales last quarter were outside of America. The iPad sales outside the U.S. have not even started yet. The potential is very large -- many billions of dollars.
Tim Cook, the COO at Apple, said that he is addicted to his iPad and that he could not live without it. I have to confess I am in the same state of mind. Many friends have asked me why I am so enthusiastic about it. Is it the music, beautiful photo display, dazzling graphics, watching movies, the greatly enhanced iPhone applications that have come to life, a great new email program, effortless web browsing, the elegance of the device, the simplicity of using it? Yes. All of the above and much more. (See "iPad Thoughts" for an index to patrickWeb iPad stories). The main thing about the iPad is that it is personal. A bit hard to describe but the personal factor is what will make people tell their friends about it and proudly show it to them -- but not let it out of their site. Curling up in a comfy chair and being able to do almost anything in the digital world -- almost everything -- but not everything is what the iPad is about. Stories to come will focus on the personal and other aspects of the iPad. The purpose of this story is to offer some thoughts about book reading.
Will the iPad dethrone the Kindle? I don't claim to have the answer but I may have some clues. I would like to share the experience of reading e-books in six ways. The PC is one and categorically not a candidate to be considered, as I am sure we all would easily agree. Second is the Barnes & Noble Nook. I had one of the first and after a couple of books it was sold on eBay for what I paid for it. See the epilogue here. That leaves four -- the iPhone, the Kindle, the iBook reader on the iPad, and the Kindle reader on the iPad. I selected one of David McCullough's outstanding pieces of work and read chapters alternately on the four readers. Following are my thoughts.
Not that many years ago I said in speeches that I "would never read a book on my cell phone". I was wrong. Reading a whole book is unlikely for me but reading a chapter here and a chapter there is for sure. Standing in line at the supermarket or waiting for a subway train or maybe sitting on a park bench offers a chance to consume something you are really anxious to read. The iPhone Kindle app provides a landscape view and it is quite readable and simple to navigate. The beautiful thing is that when you later pick up your Kindle or the Kindle app on the iPad and open the reader it asks you if you want to continue where you left off on your iPhone. The Amazon Whispersync feature is innovative and extends your reading time and enjoyment. Apple will surely have something similar or better before the year is over and Google Android readers will no doubt have a sync feature as well.
One disadvantage of the iPad as a reader is that at one and a half pounds -- not a lot compared to a laptop or even a netbook -- it is five times heavier than a Kindle. The weight is concentrated in a thin flat device and I find it uncomfortable to hold after a while. The other thing is the back-lighting. The iPad screen is actually bright -- perfect for flipping through photos, watching a movie, or surfing the web, but for a couple of hours of reading it can be hard on your eyes. The positive aspect of the iBook reader is the graphical representation of the bookshelf and the flipping of the pages. It is truly incredible that as you slowly "flip" a page with your finger you can see the words on the back of the page. You have to see it to believe it. The processing power to perform the page turning is equivalent to what was called a supercomputer not long ago. The iBook reader also has some very nice content related features. The brightness can be adjusted -- helps with eye fatigue -- and there are five selectable fonts with variable sizes. I really like the display at the lower right of each page that shows how many pages remain to be read in the current chapter. An icon at the top brings you the table of contents of the book and a listing of all your bookmarks. Adding a new bookmark is very simple. You tap tap on a word and a menu pops up asking if you want to look up the word in a dictionary, search the book for occurrences of the word, or make the word be a bookmark. When I show someone the iPad iBook reader I always make sure to place a bookmark so that after they get finished paging around I can get back to where I was.
The Kindle reader on the iPad is an updated version of the iPhone reader. It takes good advantage of the larger screen and also allows you to change the color of the pages -- white, black, or sepia. The content controls are good but not as slick as the iBook reader. Ditto with the page turning. The Kindle reader has the graphical page flip but it doesn't show the words on the back of the page. Certainly not something you need but it makes a distinction for the iBook reader that people find impressive.
Last but certainly not least of the four is the Kindle itself. The Kindle uses e-ink -- it is reflective -- like paper. The more light the better. Like millions of others, I am Kindlzed -- since 2007. The 5 once device never burdens the wrist. The Kindle is monochrome but we don't need color to read a novel. The Kindle is simple and intuitive to use. Not flashy, compared to the iPad, but dependable with long battery life. For extended reading sessions the Kindle remains best, in my opinion --- for now. I expect things to change. The multi-purpose ability of the iPad is important. I find myself jumping over to check or send an email when I think of something while reading. Rather than just look up a word in the built-in dictionary I sometimes want to visit the Wikipedia or explore a web site. The iPad has personal appeal and you get attached to it. Publishers are busy working with authors to create multimedia content to be integral to new and backlisted books -- audio in the background, video interviews with the author or clips of content relevant to the topic of the book may make books more appealing and also may make them worth more -- which brings us to the pricing.
The McCullough book was $9.99 on Amazon and $14.99 through the iBook store at Apple. Same book. No multimedia content. Is Apple's version of the book worth 50% more? Publishers really don't like the idea of people getting used to paying $9.99 for a book. They want a new model. Apple is accommodating them -- so far. Time will tell how things are going to shake out. Ken Auletta's piece from the April 26, 2010 issue of The New Yorker explores the state of book publishing with excellent analysis of the strategies of the two digital behemoths -- Amazon and Apple, and also describes how Google will soon follow with it's readers and online store. There is a very large fight beginning for control of the e-books market.
There will be much more to say about the book market but in the meantime the iPad will be selling briskly. No doubt in my mind that there will be very large adoption -- tens of millions for sure -- and it will make a big dent in PC's. Also, more to say about what the iPad can not do and about the bigger question of iTunes. When will it be in the cloud? The iPhone will continue to be an important part of my life -- for calls and picture taking. This morning I had an appointment at a place that had no WiFi (fewer and fewer of such places) so I turned on the iPad and took a minute or two to download my email inbox and the Wall Street Journal before leaving the house. It was more than enough to occupy my subsequent idle time.
Gadgets, Home Automation, Internet Technology, Media, Music, Personal Computing, WiFi, iPhone April 20, 2010 10:00 AM
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Neonatal Healthcare
We can all picture a hospital neonatal environment where a plethora of medical monitors connected to babies are used to alert hospital staff to potential health problems before patients develop clinical signs of infection or other issues. There are breakthroughs on the horizon for how this will be done. Today the instrumentation generates huge amounts of information -- up to 1,000 readings per second -- which is summarized into one reading every 30 to 60 minutes. The information is stored for up to 72 hours and is then discarded. If the stream of data could be captured, stored and analyzed in real time there would be a huge opportunity to improve the quality for special care babies.
The Hospital for Sick Children in Ontario, Canada has developed such a vision and is acting on it. Dr. Carolyn McGregor, Canada research chair in health informatics at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology visited researchers at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center who are working on a new stream-computing platform to support healthcare analytics. A three-way collaboration was established, with each group bringing a unique perspective -- the hospital focus on patient care, the university's ideas for using the data stream, and IBM providing the advanced analysis software and information technology expertise needed to turn the vision into reality.
The result of the collaboration was Project Artemis which pairs IBM scientists with clinicians and`researchers to explore how emerging technologies can solve real-world business problems, in this case developing a highly flexible platform that aims to help physicians make better, faster decisions regarding patient care for a wide range of conditions. At the Children's hospital the focus is real-time detection of the onset of nosocomial infection (often called hospital-acquired infection).
Regulatory, ethical, privacy, and safety issues were addressed and then two infant beds were instrumented and connected to the system for data collection. The team then created an algorithm that describes the streaming data. By establishing the impact of moving a baby or changing its diaper those things can be filtered out to help spot the telltale signs of nosocomial infection.
Dr. Andrew James, staff neonatologist, at the Hospital for Sick Children is optimistic that as they learn more they will be able to account for variations in individual patients and eventually be able to integrate data inputs such as lab results or observational notes. In the future any condition that can be detected through subtle changes in the underlying data streams can be the target of the system's early-warning capabilities. It is likely sensors attached to or even implanted in the body will allow monitoring of important conditions from home or anywhere.
Gadgets, Home Automation, Internet Technology, Media, Music, Personal Computing, WiFi, iPhone April 11, 2010 06:59 PM
Sunday, April 4, 2010
iPad - Part 1: Initial Thoughts
I confess -- the doorway did not get out of my sight for the entire day yesterday. I had placed my order early in the morning on March 12 and when the first tranch of thousands of iPads left China for Louisville, KY and then to Orlando and on to Daytona and then onto a big brown truck, I did not want to be the unreliable part of the distribution scheme that Apple had planned with precision. By 4 PM the doubts were arising but at 5 PM my iPhone rang and it was UPS driver at the front door with an iPad in his hands.
If you know how to use an iPhone then you know how to use an iPad. I would not agree with some who say the iPad is *just* a "big iPhone". In fact I see the iPad as the beginning of the end of a lot of things as we know them today. It will not immediately replace laptops, netbooks, magazines, Kindles, and televisions -- not immediately. Over time, however, it is easy to see how the world will change.
When we introduced the ThinkPad in 1992 it seemed like a huge deal just to get everyone at IBM to agree with the name. No one, certainly not me as VP of marketing at the time, had any idea that more than 30 million ThinkPads would be sold. The iPad will surely sell multiple times that number but more important the iPad will change the model of personal computing -- not immediately and not for everyone, but for many millions of people the PC will begin to look like a dinosaur.
One of my reasons for such a bullish view is the number of skeptics coming forward to say that the iPad is not what it is cracked up to be. Skeptics have been a reliable predictor of the next big thing -- the Internet is too insecure to allow for banking and insurance. WiFi is too expensive and slow and will fizzle. Blogging was to peak out some years ago. Social networking is a fad. The iPad is just a big iPhone. Those with decades of experience with PC's may find it difficult to master the iPad but the younger generation which grew up on Nintendo will find it natural. They will use it not just for games, music, videos, and browsing but for creative work -- writing, drawing, composing, authoring, building, creating documents and web sites and multi-media content.
The extra "real estate" -- roughly seven times more area -- of the iPad has a bigger impact than one might think. It becomes very obvious when you first see a map on it. It is not just the size but the number of pixels. The iPhone is 480 x 320 while the iPad is 1024 x 768. The clarity and brilliance are stunning. You have to see it to believe it. The TV ads and pictures do not do it justice. It is the applications that will make the iPad (and iPhone) highly successful. There will be hundreds of thousands of them and the larger screen opens up many new possibilities. Magazines will be huge hit -- the screen allows for not only more advertisements (not a feature) but for embedded video and high quality graphical content. You can do have all this on an iPhone but there is really no comparison.
There is much to say about the iPad. It has been stimulating to explore it. Many questions in my mind and much more to learn but bottom line -- I love it! There are some things that are not perfect -- more about this later. For now, let me just comment about books and the impact on the Amazon Kindle. Amazon's profit for the fourth quarter of 2009 was $384 million on revenue of $9.52 billion. That is more than $10 million of products shipped each and every day. They are not going away, with or without the Kindle, but will the iPad dethrone the Kindle?
I don't claim to have the answer but I may have clues. There are more than 40 e-book readers out there. Apple may be the largest threat to the Kindle among them, but it is not a slam dunk. At least in the short term, I do not see the iBook reader as a Kindle killer. I read a lot of books and I don't buy any that are not available on the Kindle. I am Kindlzed. The 5 once device never burdens the wrist. The iPad is just one and a half pounds -- not a lot compared to a laptop or even a netbook -- but compared to the 5 once Kindle it is almost five times as heavy. If you spend a lot of time reading you may develop a need for a wrist brace. The other thing is the lighting. The Kindle uses e-ink -- it is reflective -- like paper. The more light the better. The iPad has back-lighting. I was using the iPad out on the terrace today and it was very difficult to see the screen clearly. The Kindle was clear as a bell. (I watched a movie on the iPad indoors later and the quality was fantastic). The journalists that got to see the iPad in person in January reported that the room was dim. Why would that be? I suspect because good lighting makes the backlit screen harder to read.
I am currently reading the biography of John Adams (highly recommended based on first 40%). The Amazon Kindle book was $9.99. I invested $14.99 to buy the iBook version from Apple. It is not 50% better. The iBook is flashy and impressive. I like the feature that shows how many pages remain in the chapter you are currently reading. But we don't need color to read a novel and the iPad becomes heavy after holding it for awhile. For heavy reading, the jury is out and the Kindle wins hands down.
On a positive note, I think the iPad will find very large adoption -- tens of millions for sure -- and will make a big dent in PC's. The netbooks have been very successful but they are basically PC's with Windows. Their only redeeming feature is their low price. That is a good thing but it is not innovative and who needs another copy of Windows? PC desktops and laptops are already in decline and the iPad is going to accelerate the trend. I see the iPad lightening the load in briefcases when travelling. It will also take up a lot less space on the kitchen counter and while resting there in the new iPad case it will double as a picture viewer. In the family room it will be the controller for movies and music. Most of this story was written using the Bluetooth wireless keyboard with the iPad. I need more experience with this before I say it will become my tool for writing. Finally, with most of our data in the cloud why would anyone need a PC or laptop? Many of us will still have a PC and a big flat panel for certain things -- like Quicken -- but more and more of my time will be with the iPad. The bigger question is iTunes. When will it be in the cloud? More on that to come.
The iPhone will continue to be an important part of my life -- for calls and picture taking. And if I am in a location where there is no WiFi for the iPad, the iPhone will be my backup to the Internet. I do not plan to get the 3G model and sign up for another AT&T data plan. WiFi is available at most everywhere I go and the trend of expansion of WiFi will only accelerate.
I suspect I will keep my Kindle too. There will be many naysayers and critics of the iPad but I am certain it will be a smashing success and a long-term game changer for personal computing. It will become so pervasive in our lives that even though it is a very powerful computer, it will not be thought of as a computer. It is at the crossroads between technology and the arts.
Gadgets, Home Automation, Internet Technology, Media, Music, Personal Computing, WiFi, iPhone April 4, 2010 10:59 PM
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Electrical Energy
The Lehigh Unniversity Engineering Advisory Board meets a few times per year and at least one of the meetings focuses on a strategic issue opportunity. The meeting held earlier this month was held in Washington, D.C. and focused on U.S. electrical energy generation, transmission, distribution, storage, and consumption. One of the EAB members is Judy Marks who is an executive at Lockheed Martin and she was kind enough to have her company host our meeting. On arrival night we were fortunate to hear a short lecture on the future of fighter jet aircraft at the Lockheed Fighter Jet Demonstration Center in Arlington. Even better was that each of us got to spend some time in F-22 and F-35 flight simulators.
The Lockheed Martin (with partner Boeing) F-22 Raptor is a single seat, twin-engine fifth-generation fighter aircraft that uses stealth technology. The simulator was dumbed down and many of the questions that EAB members asked of the fighter pilot who assisted us were appropriately sprinkled with "unclassified" answers. Even the unclassified specifications were mind-numbing. As a pilot I know a little bit about aviation but not much about military jets. The flying experience in the simulators was incredible. Pull back the stick and the F-22 goes up -- straight up if you tell it to. At a cost of $143 million each it should be spectacular!
The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is also a fifth-generation, single-seat, single-engine stealth fighter but additionally is "multi-role" -- it can perform close air support, tactical bombing, and air defense missions. I flew in the simulator for the short take off and vertical-landing variant of the plane. In addition to the amazing flying capabilities it can land on an aircraft carrier vertically. As I was bringing it down, it adjusted itself to land right next to another F-35 that was on the carrier deck. The F-35 is intended to become a Joint Strike Fighter and deployed by numerous countries around the world. At a mere $83 million each it is much more affordable than the F-22!
The meeting turned serious first thing in the morning -- a deep dive by the Engineering Advisory Board along with leading experts from government, industry, and Lehigh faculty researchers in energy, advanced materials, and systems research. The goals were to assess future needs in integrated energy systems, evaluate technical and intellectual niches at Lehigh relevant to these needs, and envision a bold developmental roadmap toward a world-class energy systems research center. Lehigh has a lot of depth in key areas that are fundamental to energy systems and the brainstorming at this meeting was designed to trigger ideas to leverage the available skills. When I was an electrical engineering student 40+ years ago there were two curricula options -- power systems or electronics. The latter had a bit more glamour for many. Energy (power) systems may take the baton.
It almost goes without saying how important and massive the global energy challenge is. Clearly it warrants a full range of energy systems research activities for years to come, incorporating technologies ranging from a smart electrical grid to advanced energy generation and storage; from sensing, networking and power electronics, to integrated communication and decision support architectures and technologies that support a smarter, more efficient, more resilient, and better integrated energy system. The "smart" part of the grid has to go from top to bottom -- including at the consumer level where smart meters and smart appliances will enable consumers to know what energy they are using and to make informed decisions on when it is best to utilize energy.
Implementing the "smart grid" is easier said than done. There are many different standards and protocols in use by utilities across the country -- some would say a hodgepodge. It reminds me of the early days of the Internet. My grandchildren were born after the Internet was well established but those of us old enough to remember know how many competing networks there were in the early 1990's -- SNA from IBM, AppleLink from Apple, DecLink from Digital and dozens of others. The Internet Architecture Board of the Internet Engineering Task Force pulled together a set of standards that superseded all other networks and became *the* network. A similar effort is now underway under coordination of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It was nostalgic to read and even if you only read the table of contents you will get an appreciation of the potential. See the NIST Framework and Roadmap for smart Grid Interoperability Standards. It is standards that make the Internet global and efficient. Likewise the smart grid standards will make it possible to predict and prevent power outages and ensure efficient transmission, distribution, storage, and utilization of energy no matter how it was produced. The need for the smart grid is great and the clock is ticking. Lehigh is gearing up to provide critical research and graduates to help move things forward.
Aviation, Energy, Internet Technology, People, Public Policy, Travels March 17, 2010 02:15 PM
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
News and Reporters
Three of America's great business magazines have been around for a long time -- Forbes since 1917, BusinessWeek since 1929, and Fortune since 1930. I started reading them in 1967 when I completed engineering school and joined IBM. I stopped reading Forbes and Fortune regularly some years ago but have remained faithful to BusinessWeek for more than forty-two years. While some have criticized the magazine from time to time I have always found it an easy to read summary of what is going on in the business world. The business news coverage has been consistently good but what has not been consistent is the number of pages -- a recent issue had 68. It used to be hundreds of pages. BusinessWeek has become "paper thin". Some say that print advertising is coming back. I am not so sure. Looks to me like a ten-degree nose down dive.
As magazines and newspapers shutter, how will we get the news? "Getting" the news is the easy part -- iPhones, iPads, PC's Macs, and TV's. The bigger issue is with the declines in advertising where will the money come from to pay reporters? There are several possible answers. Yahoo Inc. and the Associated Press have reached a new licensing agreement that will allow the Web portal to continue to host AP articles. Details were not disclosed but it is obvious that the deal means that Yahoo! will start to pay more for the news they provide to their site members and visitors. Similar deals with Google, Microsoft and other portals are likely. AP is getting more clever at tracking where it's news shows up and will do it's best to eliminate free publication of their news.
A second part of the puzzle is the reduction of the number of reporters. Just as automation has reduced the need for certain skills in the economy, so too will the ubiquity of the Internet impact the scale of reporters that are needed. A breaking news story does not need to be covered by a reporter at each and every newspaper or magazine. Some news can be covered by the readers themselves. Crowdsourcing can be applied to most any endeavor. A sporting event, town hall meeting, an accident or a parade could be "covered" by crowds of people who take pictures, interview each other, write their commentary and publish it through various aggregators. News organizations themselves may utilize crowdsourcing.
The most profound question about reporting though is investigative reporting. It is not about just what is happening but why is it happening, what were the factors leading up to the news "event", what are the motivations of the various people associated with the issue, and what might the short term and long term impact be? These are questions that require skills of journalism to uncover. Not any reporter can get access to interview key figures nor does every reporter have the skills to ask the right questions and engage in discovery through dialog Last but not least is the editor. Who decides what headline to attach to a story? Who decides whether the story will be one paragraph or six two pages? Who insures the integrity of a story and that it is not biased? The editor. And is the editor biased himself or herself? A story may be considered liberal by one reader and conservative by another. This is a complex issue but I think news.google.com has the roots of the solution.
The top story at the time of this writing is "Senate jobs bill passed key hurdle on Monday night". The story was by Ed Hornick and Tami Luhby at CNN. The headline was followed by a couple of sentences describing what the story is about. Then follows two other versions of the story -- "GOP's Brown branded turncoat for jobs bill vote" by the Seattle Post Intelligencer and "US Senate could pass a jobs bill this week" by Reuters. These are followed by coverage of the story by Atlantic Online, USA Today, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. Finally, for this one story, there is a link to all 1,718 news articles (and blog postings). The point is that if you feel that The XYZ Press is biased in some way, you can pick a publication that you are more comfortable with -- that you trust -- or you may decide to read versions of the story at multiple publications and compare them with your own point of view. The news business is being reshaped by the Internet and the ultimate control is with the people.
The Knovel Blogs at are all about sharing ideas on engineering information and productivity. You can find things as diverse as an interview with a weatherman to the history of the space shuttle. If you are an engineer or have an interest in engineering, Knovel is a fun place to visit.
Neil Schulman, Editor in Chief at Knovel Blogs recently interviewed me about the 16th Annual Genesys Partners Venture Dinner -- Gen XVI-- which was held at the Union League Club in New York. The event attracted more than 100 venture capitalists, investors, journalists, entrepreneurs, and industry executives. A summary of the after-dinner comments I made can be found here. Neil's interview follows and adds some additional perspective to what I had to say at Genesys. K Exchange is the name of the Knovel Blogs.
Neil Schulman: John is a former Vice President of Internet Technology with IBM, and currently serves as president of Attitude LLC. John is also the author of Net Attitude, an essential primer on e-business strategies. John has served on Knovel's Board of Directors since 1992.
K Exchange: First off thank you for agreeing to interview with us. To start with, I have to get your impressions on the topic-of-the moment, the Apple iPad. To me, it seems way more evolutionary compared to the then-revolutionary iPhone. By extension, is the iPad just a larger version of the iPod Touch but with more bells and whistles? Will this device ultimately mean anything?
John Patrick: I am quite enthusiastic about the iPad and can't wait to get my hands on one. Some people are saying the iPad is just a big iPhone. Yes! I can't wait and it is much more than an iPhone. It has applications galore. On day one it will run 140,000 iPhone applications plus significant upgrades to calendar, contacts, mapping, and email. I see the iPad lightening the load in briefcases when travelling. It will also take up a lot less space on the kitchen counter and while resting there in the new iPad case it will double as a picture viewer. (See complete review by John on his blog at http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/archives/2010_01_31.php#Amazon and the iPad)
KX: In conjunction with that, do you see mobile devices becoming more important? Or do the limitations of 3G/4G speeds and device memory mean people will be relying more heavily on computers for the time being?
JP: Mobile is taking over. There are hundreds of millions of PC's. There are billions of mobile phones. Today most of them are "dumb" but soon most of them will be "smart". Most people in the world will access the Internet from their mobile device. The PC will become less and less relevant, accelerated by the iPad and the flood of tablet competitors who will follow.
KX: You mentioned in your blog the massive disparity between public WiFi in the US and overseas. Does the possibility of widely available WiFi (or WiGig, as you posited for the near future) make the question moot, and suggest that netbooks will be preferable to mobile devices?
JP: WiFi is growing all over the world. The netbook is just an inexpensive Windows PC. The only thing it has going for it is price. Do we really need another Windows PC? There is no innovation in netbooks.
KX: Switching gears, you also believe that social networking is going to be crucial to collaboration in the future. Are you talking about public social networks? Or about private intra-company or intra-industry networks?
JP: Both. All of the above. The days of just "plain" content are over. People expect to be able to compare notes on things. Inside or outside the firewall. The number one source that people use to pick a doctor or a hospital is not a website per se, it is asking their friends and family. Social networking is a tool to do that. In a corporate sense, the most valuable source of information on a topic may be somebody down the hall but again, social networks is a tool to reach them.
Collaboration is not new but the social networks provide enhanced tools to make collaboration work. It goes deeper than writing on someone's wall. Specialized tools are emerging such as Kindling to make social networking concepts into serious business tools. The largest source of content is user generated content. That is part of social networking too.
KX: Along those lines, we have statistics from Outsell that suggest that while 40% of engineers are on Facebook, only 4% are on Twitter. An interesting fact that may make more sense when you consider the recent stats suggesting that Twitter's growth is stagnating. Why do you think Facebook's adoption has been so much stronger among the engineering community?
JP: They are totally different types of social networking tools. Facebook is a people oriented way to establish a presence and connect with friends or colleagues. It is frictionless to achieve. Twitter is more of a protocol -- a way to send a message or "tweet". Twitter as a company may or may not survive but the concept of sending short messages and following companies or people is a fundamental and new "channel" on the Internet.
KX: Finally, I want to end on the question you asked to finish your post: "will we trust the internet?" You were talking in terms of security, but the question brings up an interesting point, do people inherently mistrust information that comes from the Internet? Obviously Wikipedia is a flawed source, but does a company like Knovel have to fight the impression of being an Internet company rather than an information provider?
JP: The Internet is the communications network. It will be a constant battle against those who want to disrupt it, but I am optimistic that the good guys will stay on top. I don't think people inherently distrust the Internet -- perhaps to the contrary. It is no different than a book. How do you know a book is accurate? The key is to test veracity through cross-checking just like doing any basic research. Knovel has a huge opportunity to leverage the Internet as the delivery mechanism to make engineers more productive. In the long run it will be important to use technology to provide digital signatures and authentication of data.
There is something about clouds that brings the term into our daily lives. We say "it is a cloudy day", or "there is not a cloud in the sky", or if we feel especially elated or happy we might say "I feel like I am on cloud nine". Nowadays many are talking about "cloud computing". Sometimes we just say something is "in the cloud". It means different things to different people.
In the early days of the Internet we thought of it as made up of three parts. First there was a discrete collection of specialized computers called routers which moved packets of ones and zeroes between origin and destination. Secondly was another set of computers called servers which contained emails and web pages, and finally the networking infrastructure including telephone wires, modems, and various networking devices such as hubs and switches that tied everything together. Users of the Internet today that are not aware of this technical history -- which is the vast majority of the world's billion + users -- know the Internet for it's most popular application, the World Wide Web. In a sense, the web is a "place" that contains all of the information and applications that we want to use.
In more recent years the larger web application providers, such as Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, and others have begun to refer to their infrastructure as "clouds". If you create a spreadsheet at Google Docs and then save it, where is it actually saved? In the Google "cloud". We don't know where it really is -- it is just "there" at docs.google.com --- in the "cloud". There are many millions of servers on the Internet but to most people there may as well just be one. That is the beauty of the Internet -- you don't have to know what the infrastructure is or how it works. But suppose the spreadsheet you create and save at Google Docs happens to be your personal financial plan with income, taxes, assets, liabilities and estate plans. Do you trust Google with this information? There are multiple dimensions to the question and answers. From my perspective it is important to compare the risk to that of keeping such data on your own computer. In short, I would say that the risk of your data getting compromised at Google is less than the risk of your hard drive crashing or having your laptop stolen at Laguardia Airport.
Consumer and enterprise interest in cloud computing is on the rise. As security and reliability guarantees of public cloud service providers improve, more businesses are turning to the cloud not only to optimize their own IT infrastructure and workloads but to improve efficiencies in their business models by better integrating employees with clients and suppliers. In January IBM announced the largest enterprise cloud computing deployment in history at Panasonic Corporation. The consumer electronics giant has begun a migration to IBM's LotusLive public cloud services. More than 100,000 employees in various departments will participate initially and the expand to more than 300,000 employees and external partners and suppliers.
The Panasonic users will work together across the Web as efficiently as if they were all down the hall. The company believes that the freedom and cost-efficiencies of the cloud are compelling and that the IBM cloud will provide the security, reliability and privacy they require. The users will get web conferencing, file sharing, instant messaging, project management and social networking for business communications between employees, partners and suppliers. Panasonic has made a strategic decision to unify its brands worldwide under the Panasonic name and the IBM cloud solution will allow the global effort to provide a competitive advantage by helping its multiple business units work together more efficiently.
Is cloud computing for businesses or for consumers? It is for people. Businesses do not buy from businesses. People in businesses buy from people in businesses. Clouds are all about making people more productive. Panasonic appears to be adopting this philosophy in a major way and setting a very good example which will surely be emulated.
Amazon's profit for the fourth quarter of 2009 was $384 million on revenue of $9.52 billion. That is more than $10 million of products shipped each and every day. Retail sales in total in the U.S. was roughly one trillion dollars in the third quarter of 2009. Just 3.5% of that -- $35 billion -- was e-commerce, but of that $35 billion, Amazon was more than $5 billion. Amazon is truly the emerging juggernaut of retail. Of the millions of retailers one of them represented 15% of retail e-commerce. Many stories here on patrickWeb as to why this is the case. What are the threats that Amazon faces? In particular, will the iPad dethrone the Kindle?
I don't claim to have the answer but I may have clues. There are more than 40 e-book readers out there. Apple may be the largest threat to the Kindle among them, but it is not a slam dunk. I am quite enthusiastic about the iPad and can't wait to get my hands on one but I do not see it as a Kindle killer. I read a lot of books and I don't buy any that are not available on the Kindle. I am Kindlzed. The 5 once device never burdens the wrist and it fits nicely on holders I made for the elliptical trainer and treadmill. I tried the nook but was happy to sell it on eBay after a month. The nook is very nice, as I have written previously, one of the issues is that it is heavy compared to the Kindle.
Will potential new Kindle buyers turn instead to the iPad? Many will for sure but I think there are a couple of inhibitors for people who read a lot of books. The iPad is just one and a half pounds -- not a lot compared to a laptop or even a netbook -- but compared to the 5 once Kindle it is almost five times as heavy. If you spend a lot of time reading you may develop a need for a wrist brace. The other thing is the lighting. The Kindle uses e-ink -- it is reflective -- like paper. The more light the better. Reading by a good light or in the sunlight is better than trying to read in the dark. The iPad has back-lighting. I am sure the color screen is brilliant and for movies and pictures and magazines and newspapers it will no doubt be great. The demo by the New York Times at Steve Jobs' keynote was quite impressive. But, for an hour or two of reading I have my doubts about how easy it may be on the eyes. We don't need color to read a novel. The journalists that got to see the iPad in person reported that the room was dim. Why would that be? I suspect because good lighting makes the backlit screen harder to read.
On a positive note, I think the iPad will find very large adoption -- tens of millions for sure -- and will make a big dent in PC's. The netbooks have been very successful but they are basically PC's with Windows. Their only redeeming feature is their low price. That is a good thing but it is not innovative and who needs another copy of Windows? PC desktops and laptops are already in decline and the iPad is going to accelerate the trend.
Some people are saying the iPad is just a big iPhone. Yes! I can't wait and it is much more than an iPhone. It has applications galore. On day one it will run 140,000 iPhone applications plus significant upgrades to calendar, contacts, mapping, and email. There will also be advanced word processor, spreadsheet and presentation apps. The creative juices of software developers around the world will introduce hundreds of thousands of new and exciting apps that the large multi-touch color screen makes possible.
I see the iPad lightening the load in briefcases when travelling. It will also take up a lot less space on the kitchen counter and while resting there in the new iPad case it will double as a picture viewer. In the family room it will be the controller for movies and music. With the keyboard dock or wireless keyboard I suspect it will become my tool for writing. With most of our data in the cloud why would anyone need a PC or laptop? Many of us will still have a PC and a big flat panel for certain things -- like Quicken -- but more and more of my time will be with the iPad.
We don't need color to read a novel but there is no doubt authors and publishers will develop books with color pictures and video in them. Publishers really really don't like Amazon's $9.99 eBook model. A big war is taking shape. Amazon is offering enhanced royalties but only if the publisher keeps the price low. Apple is telling the publishers to charge whatever they want. The problem for the publishers is that Kindle on the iPhone -- which most readers don't use -- will work on the iPad on day one. I do use the iPhone to read Kindle books when I am in line at the supermarket or a waiting room. I love how the "bookmark" keeps track of where I left off on the Kindle or on my iPhone and soon on the iPad. Will there be two versions of the same book on the iPad? One with the Kindle reader and one with the iBook reader? Maybe. Some books may come in black & white and "enhanced" versions with color and embedded video.
The iPhone will continue to be an important part of my life -- for calls and picture taking. And if I am in a location where there is no WiFi for the iPad, the iPhone will be my backup to the Internet. I do not plan to get the 3G model and sign up for another AT&T data plan. WiFi is available at most everywhere I go and the trend of expansion of WiFi will only accelerate. The iPad demo is great -- the Apple team really has their act together. The iPad is not perfect. It does not support Flash movies, for example. If you read the WSJ and click on a video you will get a message saying that you need the Adobe Flash player. Apple has chosen not to make Flash available on their products. Adobe Flash is proprietary and although nearly all computers support it, the web standards people are developing an open standard for video. Apple seems to be betting that this will happen soon. Apple is also quite proprietary -- more so than Microsoft was in the 1990's and IBM in the 1980's.
The $499 entry price is aggressive but by the time you add the extra storage -- which is the smart thing to do -- plus an extra dock or keyboard or case or car charger plus the three new iWorks apps @ $9.99 each plus 3G if you need it plus plus, you end up spending $1,000 or more. The netbook I bought my wife for Christmas was $249. So the iPad is expensive and although for millions of people it will be their only computer, for many of us it will be one of several. I suspect I will keep my Kindle too. There will be many naysayers and critics of the iPad but I am certain it will be a smashing success and a long-term game changer for personal computing. It will become so pervasive in our lives that even though it is a very powerful computer, it will not be thought of as a computer. It is at the crossroads between technology and the arts.
The 16th Annual Genesys Partners Venture Dinner -- Gen XVI-- Monday night at the Union League Club in New York attracted more than 100 venture capitalists, investors, journalists, entrepreneurs, and industry executives. As always, Jim Kollegger -- CEO of Genesys Partners and one of the pioneers of the information industry -- was an elegant master of ceremonies. He introduced the various sponsors, next day panelists for the SIIA Conference, several startup CEO's, and a few of us who have been around the block a few times, each to make some comments.
Like a broken record, I offered the normal upbeat view of the future of the Internet but prefaced my remarks by asserting that we are only 5% of the way there. In other words, of all the things that could be done on the Internet that would save us time and make our lives better, only 5% of them are there. It may sound low but consider retail e-commerce. Although there has been continuous and steady growth of retail e-commerce it still represents just 3.5% of total retail (as of the end of October). Why isn't it 25% or more? Much written about that here at patrickWeb but the short version is that there are still a lot of lame web sites. "Click here for the location of our nearest dealer where you can visit or call to buy the product you just found" or "Click here to download this form and fax it to us". And of course there are the ubiquitous clipboards at doctor offices where we take a pen and provide a lot of information information that they already have.
I described one man's view of the evolution of the Internet including the seven characteristics below. This parsed way of looking at the Internet has served me well for quite a few years. The things going on under each area continuously change and Jim asks me once a year to do a thumbnail sketch of my latest thinking.
Fast Broadband in the U.S. is not a pretty story compared to other parts of the world. The problem is that there are too many lobbyists and the FCC is a political organization. The new FCC head is a very smart guy with venture and business experience. He totally gets it. The only problem is that AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon have more lawyers than he does. Meanwhile France is racing at full speed to offer 100 megabit access and WiFi throughout the country. Thanks to the telco lobby, many states have banned the offering of WiFi by municipal entities.
Always On
WiFi is part of the fabric of the world. The big shift is streaming of data -- not just tweets, but data from *things*. Bridges, toll booths, traffic lights and sensors, buildings, cars, and health monitoring devices attached to people. Hospital physicians will be able s will soon be adjusting the drip rate on infusion pumps in the hospital from their office based on real-time data from the patient. The WiFi infusion pumps enable hospital administrators to know where the pumps are (they never have enough of them) and which ones need maintenance. WiMax continues to struggle. Some believe it will replace WiFi. My bet is on WiFi and in a two years or less we will have WiGig -- gigabit wireless.
Everywhere Cloud computing has become the mainstay for me and for millions. Whether it is gmail or MobileMe the convenience and reliability of the clouds is compelling. The next big wave is enterprise cloud computing. Virtualization is making enterprise servers more scalable, reliable, and efficient than ever. AJAX is enabling applications to run in any browser on any kind of computer including mobile. Especially mobile. There are hundreds of millions of PC's but there are billions of mobile devices. Today most of them are dumb. In a few years most of them will be smart. Opera sofware is enabling even the dumb phones to have web access.
Natural Social networking may not be a business model in and unto itself but it has become fundamental to all aspects of our economy and society. Integration of social networking with a full range of web applications will evolve to become the primary means of collaboration. The emerging issue is that many people are a bit liberal with sharing their every movement -- what they are eating, listening to, where they are headed, their current latitude and longitude, and where they slept last night. They are not thinking that some day they may run for office or interview for a job.
Intelligent
The Semantic Web is the next big turn of the crank but the crank is moving slowly. Most web pages have links but do not have context. In other words the words on the page do not necessarily mean anything -- but they could. If a web page said "Join us for a concert by The Eagles at Kimmel Center in Philadelphia next Tuesday" that set of words could have a lot of context. Clicking on it could add the concert to your calendar, knowing what "next Tuesday" means. It would also know exactly where the Kimmel Center is and that The Eagles is a performing group that performs a particular genre and your music player would receive a list of suggestions of music they have recorded or links to live concerts under way at the moment. This is the tip of the iceberg. The semantic web will lead us to a point where most of the interactions of web pages will be between computers not between computers and people. The biggest growth of intelligence is occurring in the field of analytics. Exabytes of data are being stored. Analytics will enable businesses to make sense of it, model their business and continuously adapt to what is going on.
Easy
Technology isn't the easiest thing at times. There are many dimensions to "easy" but one good example is the Nintendo Wii. At a local senior center, members find the Wii to be their exercise coach. It is not just for kids! The iPhone has shown how easy it can be to get applications on a handheld computer. Amazon has done the same with the Kindle. Apple may do it again with a rumored tablet. Most companies still don't get the idea that the Internet is about power to the people. If you can't make it simple, people won't buy it.
Trusted
This is the big one. Will we trust the Internet? Security technology is available to achieve much higher levels of security than presently deployed both at enterprise and consumer levels. The bigger issue will be privacy. Banks have our personal information and they are using it. Healthcare insurers have more information about our health than our doctors do. Nevertheless, there is much to be optimistic about when it comes to electronic medical records. Maybe 5% of doctors and hospitals use them but this will likely rise fast and the result will be better care, better outcomes, and fewer errors. And, fewer clipboards.
I continue to learn a lot about libraries from my board service at OCLC. No grass is growing under their feet at OCLC as they continue to look for new ways to connect the world's libraries. Mobile devices are fast becoming the medium of choice for access to information for more and more of us. OCLC has been aggressive on this front and has just partnered with RedLaser to introduce an innovative iPhone app which puts information about books from thousands of libraries at your fingertips.
RedLaser, developed by Occipital, of Boulder, Colorado, turns the iPhone camera into a barcode scanner. Just aim the camera at the barcode on a book and the app captures the information. You then tap on it and the app uses a connection to OCLC's WorldCat to deliver localized U.S. library results based on the your geolocation and it provides a list of libraries that have the book plus the library locations, contacts and map information. There is a very good interview Mike Teets of OCLC and a demo here.
OCLC has opened up the interfaces to WorldCat not only for RedLaser but to anyone interested in creating non-commercial mash-ups or mobile apps that utilize library data. The WorldCat iPhone app can also be used separately. A version of the WorldCat Mobile app also works on Android phones, including the Motorola Droid and the new Google Nexus One.
I have to admit that I had never heard of WorldCat until I got involved at OCLC. Quite impressive that it is the world's largest database of bibliographic information. Institutions around the world share the records, using them to create local catalogs, arrange interlibrary loans and conduct reference work. There are now more than 165 million records in WorldCat spanning five millennia of recorded knowledge. Like the knowledge it describes, WorldCat grows steadily. Every second, OCLC and its member libraries add seven records to WorldCat.
Commercial Air travel is not a barrel of fun these days but leaving home at 4:30 in the morning enabled me to get an early flight and a smooth trip to San Francisco. The return trip two days later was a different story. Airlines can't control the weather and occasional maintenance issues are to be expected, but the frustrating part is the lack of good communications on the ground at the airports and the lack of integrated systems resulting in getting different information -- kiosk, overhead displays, ticket counter, at the gate, airline lounges -- for the same flight. The maintenance issue was fixed quickly but the "paperwork" to get approval for takeoff required a couple of hours. Most of us have similar stories -- there are a number of my airline stories here in the blog.
This was the eighth year for the Supernova conference -- run by Kevin Werbach who is a leading expert on the business, policy, and social implications of emerging Internet and communications technologies. Kevin has a good track record of anticipating key trends along the path to the Network Age. Supernova attracts CEOs, bloggers, entrepreneurs, academics, practitioners, visionaries, policy experts and industry thought leaders. Like all conferences, the best part is catching up with friends and colleagues and comparing points of view.
There are a couple of unique things about Supernova. It is the only conference that connects with one of the world's foremost business schools -- the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The other unique feature is how "connected" the attendees can become with the speakers and each other. Supernova offers a live video stream, a twitter feed, and live blogging to enable attendees and remote participants from all over the world -- there were 200+ people from numerous countries in San Francisco this year -- to all jump into the conversation.
It is very difficult to summarize what I learned at Supernova. Every year it is mind expanding. I feel fortunate to be there and participate in the dialogue and stay somewhat on the edge of what is evolving. The mobile Internet continues to gain momentum -- seemed that everyone there had an iPhone. Last year I reported that social computing was mushrooming. Not sure what word describes the current status -- maybe all-consuming. There are serious discussions going on in the development community about how (not whether) to standardize identity, authorization, and applications across the various social networks in some sensible way. Privacy has always been an issue but as storage cost approaches zero, everything we say or do will be saved. Twitter is the tip of the iceberg. The telecommunications operators continue to consolidate and continue to offer poor customer service and a lack of choice.
Kevin kicked things off at the Mission Bay Conference Center (UCSF Campus) with his view of the "changing world". The afternoon panels focused on how pervasive connectivity is altering everything from our social interactions to our cities and how the infrastructure of the Internet is quietly being transformed. The rise of cloud computing and broadband applications are shifting the landscape for both network operators and service providers. Anil Dash talked about how networking is beginning to make government more efficient and collaborative. Peter Gruber talked about the turmoil in the motion picture industry where it is becoming harder to predict what consumers will want. Avatar -- to be released in a couple of weeks -- cost $350 million to produce while Paranormal Activity is said to have cost $11,000. Which one will make more money? Chris Anderson, of Wired, talked about how a clever designer can use three-D software at home to design a physical object and then "manufacture" it on a $750 three-D printer in the basement.
Day two was at the Wharton San Francisco Campus. During the Opening Plenary Session, JP Rangaswami, John Hagel, Umair Haque, and Ellen Levy talked about the financial crisis and whether it is a permanent discontinuity in market economics or just a temporary bump in the road? The consensus was that the current recovery is temporary and there are big problems ahead. John Hagel cited that big business has had a steady decline in return on assets for decades and there is no sign that it will reverse. Not a pretty picture. I am more optimistic than any of the panelists.
Another interesting panel was about whether "There is a Media Business?". Their consensus was that the world doesn't need newspapers, record labels, and TV broadcasters as we know them but it does need journalism and distribution mechanisms for quality entertainment and information. The focus of the discussion was whether innovative new forms of online media will replace what is lost as traditional industries collapse? Most of us would say yes.
My friend and moderator Tim O'Reilly moderated a discussion about "Going with the Flow". We are moving from a world of web pages to a rich and continuous stream of information. Emails replaced by tweets. A web page about train schedules replaced by real-time data on where the trains are at the moment. Reading a review of something replaced by tweets of where someone is having a meal and what music they are listening too. For some, all of this is too much, even for some techies. One thing I can say for sure. The trend to more and more information about everything and everybody is not going to reverse any time soon. Hopefully kids will learn that posting things about their social activities today may prevent them getting a job or getting elected in the future. There is a lot of room for some common sense.
The panel about telecommunications was really good. Paul DeSa from the FCC gave a glimmer of hope. The FCC really wants to maintain an open Internet, deploy broadband throughout the country, and keep competition going to increase innovation. As I have written here many times, I am convinced that Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T do not share any vision that might reduce their monopoly power and profitability. I am all for profitability but only in a competitive marketplace. The lack of adequate competition is why prices are high, contracts lock us in, Internet speeds are exaggerated, and customer service is poor. I am not in favor of expanded government but in the area of telecommunications the government is our only hope in the short run. Looking forward to Supernova in 2010.
On December 7th, the Danbury Area Computer Society will hold it's monthly meeting and it will be my honor to give a talk (at 7:45PM) about The Future of the Internet. (This will be the eighteenth year in a row that I have done this). The meeting will be open to the public and will take place in the auditorium at Danbury Hospital. The talk will be an update on how the next generation of the Internet is unfolding and how it will affect our personal and professional lives. I will discuss recent developments that are fueling the rapid evolution of the Internet and enabling more than a billion people to experience a Net that is fast, always on, everywhere, natural, intelligent, easy, and trusted. The potential for information technology to improve healthcare will also be discussed. There is a Program Preview by Jim Scheef on the DACS homepage.
It is a privilege to be able to participate and contribute
to various boards. It is also a way to learn a lot, meet great people
and gain new perspectives. That has certainly been the case since I joined the board of OCLC (see press release). Fifteen years ago some pundits -- myself not included -- were saying that libraries were history -- as in toast -- they were not long for the emerging digital world. Been to a local or college library lately? They are full of people and many are expanding their facilities. Library use has doubled over the past decade. What happened to the digital "vision"? It turns out that the digital and physical can get along together quite well.
The month after I graduated from Lehigh University in 1967, OCLC -- Online Computer Library Center, Inc. -- was founded in Dublin, Ohio as a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research
organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to
the world's information and reducing information costs for libraries. More than
72,000 libraries in 171 countries and territories around the world use
OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library
materials. Each of these five verbs has special and profound meaning to a very large number of librarians and library visitors.
Over the months ahead, as I learn more about OCLC, some stories about the various services of OCLC will appear in follow-on postings. For now I will just highlight one of them -- the crown jewel -- WorldCat. WorldCat is the world's largest network of library content and services, connecting millions of users to the collections and services of more than 10,000 libraries around the world. WorldCat.org lets you search not just the collections of libraries in your community but thousands more around the world. Thirty-one million new records were added to WorldCat in the past year bringing the total to 139 million. How does WorldCat differ from other web resources?
Suppose you are doing some research on the origins of a town where you live and specifically you want to learn more about the history of Connecticut's Golden Hill Paugussett tribe . You might find a book for sale at Barnes & Noble or Amazon about the subject but not necessarily. Using the web site or your iPhone you visit WorldCat and do the search. WorldCat tells you that A history of Connecticut's Golden Hill Paugussett tribe is not available in the local library but it is available at the Fairfield University library just fifteen miles away. If you are not in a hurry you could stop at your local library and ask them to arrange an interlibrary loan for you. In the past the lending process was manual and costly but using WorldCat tools, the libraries can handle book loans quite easily. If you are not sure the book you found is exactly what you are looking for you might use WorldCat's "Ask a Librarian" service.
WorldCat allows you to search for books, music CDs and videos -- all of the physical items you're used to getting from libraries -- but you can also discover downloadable audiobooks, article citations with links to their full text, authoritative research materials, and digital versions of rare items that aren't available to the public. Some libraries allow you to join a waiting list, reserve the item, check it out or even have it shipped or delivered. WorldCat also leverages the social computing model by allowing you to enter ratings and reviews and contribute factual notes. The more people enter the more useful WorldCat becomes. That is their model -- enhancing the sharing of information on a global basis. The vision is "The world's libraries. Connected.".
I will believe it when I see it confirmed -- hopefully in the Spring -- but looks like the FCC commissioners understand the importance of an open Internet. Net neutrality is a really really important issue with far reaching implications. Unfortunately, the term net neutrality has become politicized and means different things to different people but I think we can all identify with things that are not net neutral.
Suppose Comcast makes an exclusive deal with ESPN. You read about it in the news and you go to the newly advertised ESPN web page and it says, "This page only available to readers who use Comcast as their Internet service provider". You use Verizon or AT&T so you can not get access to the new ESPN content. Or how about going to a healthcare site and finding out you can no longer get access to your electronic medical record unless you change Internet service providers. Perhaps extreme examples, but possible. There have been various efforts over the past fifteen years to "balkanize" the Internet -- in other words create internets within the Internet. I recall one effort that I was asked to get involved with -- but of course declined -- was to create a "New York Web". It was to be a "private" internet with no access to or from the Internet. A really bad idea which fortunately got no traction. The Federal government has also considered various unique internets to provide enhanced security.
Not that the open Internet we have today is perfect. It isn't. There are many shortcomings but they are being addressed through an open global standards-based approach. That is what makes the Internet unique and why it has attracted more than a billion users. Think of something else that works the same everywhere in the world -- currency? railroad track sizes? which side of the road to drive on? electrical sockets and plugs? I can not think of anything that works exactly the same in every corner of the globe -- and even in outer space -- except the Internet. It is really impotant to keep it that way. Why? I cite a number of examples in Net Attitude but there are new reasons popping up every day.
Global tracking of diseases so that medical assistance can be where it is needed is made possible by the Internet. The World Community Grid
is running virtual chemistry experiments to determine which of the
millions of small molecules can attach to the influenza virus and
inhibit it from spreading. There is the potential to make the world a
better place because of this project. Using the Internet to connect millions of idle PC's around the world, the grid is able to work as one massive supercomputer. Not to be minimized is the ability of the global Internet to prevent many countries from oppressing their people as the net provides a way to get out the word on what is actually happening. Last but not least is the power of the Internet to allow a really good idea from anywhere in the world to find an interest by someone in any other part of the world and thereby spawn innovation and new businesses.
I am confident that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski completely understands all this but there are others who are threatened. Although the FCC voted unanimously to allow the rule making to go forward it faces enormous lobbying over the months ahead from Internet service providers like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Qwest. They say that net neutrality would strip them of the ability to manage their networks effectively and that it would stifle innovation and competition. The providers do not want to be just providers of "dumb pipes" for the Internet. They want to move up the value chain and get involved with the content where there is potentially more profit. No problem with content deals as long as they don't violate net neutrality.
This is not a matter of government regulating the Internet. That would be a bad thing. What it does mean is that the government would prevent providers from closing off how the Internet works.
There was a short overnight in Telluride with some friends and then on to San Diego for DEMOfall. Demo continues to be my favorite conference -- the semi-annual event attracted nearly 600 attendees. The Demo conference
allows entrepreneurs to show off new gadgets, software, hardware and
business ideas and enables the press, analysts, investors, and
technology enthusiasts to assess what they see. Companies like IBM scout for potential acquisitions. The product
introductions that take place reveal key technology trends over the
coming 12 to 18 months. This year there were 70 companies
showing their latest and greatest -- each getting six minutes on stage to tell their story.
Chris Shipley, executive producer of Demo and Chairman and CEO of Guidewire Group, screens the companies and introduces them to the audience. After
the main tent sessions the attendees get to visit with the companies in
the "Demo Tent".
There were some key trends that were reinforced at DEMO again this year. Many companies in some way talked about mobile. Most companies either provide a web service or use web services as their platform. The term "cloud" is gaining traction in their vocabulary. Most companies were media related in some way or provided or used social networking. None of these things are new, by any means, but DEMO confirmed their strategic importance and demonstrated significant implementations. I don't think any of them have cracked the code so to speak but there were many that had exciting visions and demos. There were two changes in direction I noticed compared to last year. First is that nearly everybody at the conference had an iPhone. Secondly, most of the companies either offer their software for the Mac or are planning to.
There isn't time to visit all of companies so I try to
be selective -- I visited 25 of the companies this time. Some of the ones I found interesting follow. They are in no particular order.
Local Dirt says they want to be "Everyone's place to buy, sell, and find local food". They have created an e-commerce platform to enable grocery stores or consumer groups to buy from local farmers and farmer markets. Locally grown food is the fastest growing segment of the food business and Local Dirt got a lot of interest.
CallSpark! aims to replace the phone icon in your iPhone with their. The enhancement is that if you want to call Fedex or Marriott or Hertz, CallSpark! finds the number for you even though it is not in your iPhone contact list. Basically, CallSpark! virtually expands your contact list to find people or businesses. I look forward to trying it out when it is on the App Store.
DOTGO enables you to use your mobile phone to quickly, easily, and
reliably access any web site -- to read the news, check a train schedule,
or track a package by simply sending a text message. For example you could send a text to DOTCOM (368266) and put Coca Cola in the body of the message. DOTGO would have a marketing agreement with Coca Cola that would enable them to respond with information to you such as a link to go to a special offer.
Keen has a really slick commerce program to automate the small printers of the world. Every deal with a local printer? The one is this area does everything manually -- preferably by phone but also fax. No email! Keen takes a broad view of the processes involved and has a comprehensive solution to streamline the process of getting things printed.
Fusebox is a collaborative system that does it all. Instant messaging, annotating or tagging movies with friends, and have online meetings. Take a look.
Gogrok is in this space too. They say they are going to make on-line collaboration easier and more interactive so that people can understand each other completely via the Internet. I found it interesting but suspect it will have trouble getting traction.
Intelius has a "People Search" which they claim is a great way to find and reconnect with family, old
friends, relatives -- just about anyone! People Search reports include
phone numbers, address history, ages, birth dates, household members,
home value, income and more. They promoted it as a date check. Frightening!
Cazoodle is a specialized search engine for buying things. It not only finds things but also organizes the various features and options so you can make a good choice and get a good price.
Digsby integrates instant messaging, email, and social networks into one easy to use application. That is their goal. I did not find very intuitive but it was defintely clever. The idea is to make it easy to write something and place it as a tweet and a Facebook post in a few mouse clicks.
Radioweave says they are the "second century of radio" and they have a system that creates a custom broadcasting "channel". They say that In traditional radio, you tune in to a single channel until you are bored and then you change channels.
This is just a sample. They were all interesting. Statistically, of the seventy companies at Demo probably a half-dozen will survive. Some will get purchased and become a feature in another company's offering. Some will run out of money and move on to another idea. Entrepreneurs never stop.
The motorcycle ride to the Town of Saugerties was very nice. The four of us met downtown and went to The Dutch Ale House for lunch. Saugerties has a lot of history going back to 1677. The town is a quaint community located between the majestic Catskill Mountains and the scenic 315 mile long Hudson River. We strolled through the 19th century Village and picked off a geocache on the way down to the fully operational lighthouse. I checked the Tide Chart to make sure we could make it along the trail which is only about 4' above sea level. The first part of the multi-cache was at the lighthouse -- placed in a very clever way. The micro film canister contained a piece of paper with the latitude and longitude of the actual cache which was a quarter of a mile away. It too was cleverly placed. This cache find was #99 since we started geocaching in 2003.
Speaking of "clever", the World Community Grid just announced the completion of the first phase of the "Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together" project. It took only two years to complete because the members provided nearly 12,000 years of computer processing time to the project. Anyone can participate in the World Community Grid by installing a small piece of software similar to a screen saver. When your PC is idle the excess computing capability that it has gets pulled into a pool to help out on various projects of global importance. One of my PC's contributed a modest 94 days of processing time to the "Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together" project.
Completing this phase of the project is a significant contribution to the research of not only Dengue Fever but also Hepatitis C, West Nile, Yellow Fever and other diseases caused by the Flaviviridea family of viruses. Get the latest details about the project here and if you want to add your idle computing capacity to important projects just visit the World Community Grid.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a general term for a family of technologies that enable voice communications over the Internet (and corporate intranets). Strong double-digit growth has placed VoIP into everyday life for many millions of people. In the early days I used Packet8. Then a VoIP system was created by entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and a group of software engineers based in Tallinn, Estonia. I happened to be in Tallinn as part of a Baltic cruise a couple of years ago and wondered why the cobbled streets of a nearly thousand-year old small town on the Baltic Sea was lined with brand new high-end sedans. Later I realized that Tallinn was a mini Silicon Valley and home to the development of Skype. Skype became my "phone" for SMS messaging but especially for calling home from abroad for free. Skype was a game changer. A potentially even bigger game changer is Google Voice.
I have used a number of the VoIP services over the years but an impediment has always been that there was no way to use an existing contact list. With Google Voice you get instant synchronization with your Gmail contact list. When you start out you get a phone number -- you can pick most any area code you want. The new number then becomes your "universal" number. When someone calls it your cell phone, your office phone, you home phone, and vacation home phone all ring. You answer and hear who is calling and press 1 to accept the call. Or for some people that you designate, the call goes straight to voicemail. For others only your cell phone rings. You can add your contacts to different groups and have each group be treated differently. You can "ListenIn" on voicemails as they are being recorded and then decide to enter a conversation. When you receive a voicemail you get an email containing a machine transcription of the message. It is not perfect but good enough that you can tell who it is and what the call is about. You can block callers, record conversations, or add them into an ongoing conference call -- up to four callers can be added to the free conference call. The history tab in Google Voice shows all of your inbound and outbound calls. Needless to say you can search through the history of all your calls to refresh your memory about a conversation you had a year ago. SMS messages and all of your calls have shared inboxes, trash, history, and spam folders just like gmail.
The feature I like the most is that you can install X-Lite -- a free VoIP program that runs on your PC -- and add the associated SIP number as one of your Google Voice phone numbers. When a call comes in while you are at your PC, a dialogue box pops up on your display. You click "answer" and then the call can be handled with a headset (I use a Plantronics noise-canceling model) which provides hands-free high quality audio for me and the caller. Another nice feature is that you can make a Google Voice call from your iPhone (or any mobile phone). All U.S. calls are free. A call to Norway is two cents per minute. With free conference calls and a boatload of other free features, Google Voice is going to put the heat on the telephony monopolists. It will also put pressure on eBay's $2.5 billion acquisition of Skype for which they later took a $1.4 billion write-down.
Speaking of the telephony monopolists, there have been rumors -- denied by AT&T -- that the giant phone company told Apple not to approve Google mobile for the iPhone. Apple says it is looking into it. Apple's concern is that Google mobile is so tightly integrated and user-friendly that it takes away from the iPhone's branded look and feel as a phone. This is just the beginning of a clash between Apple and Google. As for AT&T, they like innovation as long as it is not at their expense. Google mobile would let people call Europe for free or close to free while AT&T charges $1.49 per minute unless you sign up for a monthly plan. Google Voice, Google mobile, Skype, and the many other innovative VoIP providers see a phone call as just another form of data and moving data around the Internet is very cost effective. AT&T sees a phone call as a voice service and they are trying desperately to protect their revenue by stifling progress.
The Wall Street Journal just published an excellent editorial on this subject called Why AT&T Killed Google Voice. The sub-title to the story is "Telecom operators are yesterday's business. It's time for a national data policy that encourages innovation". Author of the story Andy Kessler says the Federal Communications Commission is investigating wireless open access and handset exclusivity and that the result " may finally end the 135-year-old Alexander Graham Bell era. It's about time.".
Kessler says "AT&T is dying" and that they are "dragging down the rest of us by overcharging us for voice calls and stifling innovation in a mobile data market critical to the U.S. economy". The problem is a lack of competition. Unlike all other Internet and data-related companies where there are thousands of competitors, when it comes to ownership of the spectrum -- the wireless pipe to customers -- that is hardly the case. Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile joined AT&T in bidding some $70+ billion since the mid-1990s for spectrum. The cost gets passed on to us in the form of higher fees. They have not had to compete on price. Google Voice is the new competition offering voice service for free by leveraging their huge data handling systems resources and advertising revenue.
Kessler says we can live with overpaying for mobile but "it's inexcusable that new, feature-rich and productive applications like Google Voice are being held back, just to prop up AT&T while we wait for it to transition away from its legacy of voice communications". Now the FCC and its new Chairman Julius Genachowski are getting involved. Hopefully the outcome will be deregulation not regulation. Many will call for a new national communications policy. But even that's obsolete and Kessler comes at it differently. "There is no such thing as voice or text or music or TV shows or video. They are all just data. We need a national data policy". There are four parts to Kessler's idea.
End phone exclusivity. Any device should work on any network -- yes, including the iPhone. Data should flow freely. Transition away from giant companies owning airwaves and move to a standards based unregulated model like WiFi. End municipal exclusivity deals for cable companies -- yes, including Comcast. Recognize that "TV channels" are a thing of the past. Enable people to pay for what they want to watch and not have to pay for dozens of "channels" they don't watch. Encourage much faster data connections to our homes and phones. Kessler says it should more than double every two years. To homes, five megabits today should be 10 megabits in 2011, 25 megabits in 2013 and 100 megabits in 2017. These data connection speeds are technically doable today but are being held back by obsolete voice and video policies made to satisfy the telecom giants and their legions of lobbyists.
I agree with Andy Kessler that technology doesn't wait around -- "so it's all going to happen anyway" -- but it will take years too long given the current course and speed. The best thing the new FCC could do would be to adopt the four pints above and then put itself out of business. New services like Twitter don't need to file with the FCC. Neither should new "voice" services. Voice is just another kind of data. Let's treat it that way.
There have been a number of stories here about service problems with Comcast. The company unfortunately gets a lot of criticism and I must say it is mostly well deserved. The latest concern is that Comcast is getting very aggressive with email marketing campaigns -- most recently an invitation to participate in their sweepstakes.
It used to be that everything from Comcast was paper. Now it is paper plus a barrage of emails. Notices of my monthly statement and anything related to cable service is fine but I don't want "Channel 1 On Demand: July highlights". Hopefully, spam filters will be able to tell the difference. At the bottom of the sweepstakes e-mail was "THIS E-MAIL IS AN ADVERTISEMENT". Really? Not only is your inbox spammed but your intelligence is questioned.
To add insult to injury the sweepstakes e-mail said "To exclude yourself from receiving future mailings regarding sweepstakes, please send a written request to "Thank You Times 3 Sweepstakes" C/O Comcast Cable Communications Management, LLC, Attention: Lifecycle Marketing, 1 Comcast Center, 1701 JFK Blvd., Philadelphia, PA 19103-2838." The e-mail went out in a blast but a request to respect your privacy requires a written letter. Then they sum it up with "Comcast respects your privacy"! I took a look at their privacy policy and not surprisingly the 5,645 word document was written by lawyers to be read by lawyers. I could rant on, as many people and journalists do, but I'll stop for now. Comcasted.
The month of June was another busy one at IBM with a flurry of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. See the list of press releases here and an index for prior months here. A major focus area in addition to a "smarter planet" is is Cloud Computing. IBM introduced the industry's first set of commercial cloud services
and integrated products for the enterprise. This is an important and strategic move for the company. It reminds me of some disruptive times during my IBM career (hard to believe it began 42 years ago).
Disruption is usually associated with a technological shift but I have observed that the disruption is preceded by and accompanied by a "dissatisfier". We have seen this movie three times.
In the 1980's the dissatisfier was departments in enterprises that were dissatisfied with how long it took for the IT department to introduce new applications that addressed departmental needs. Departments started using spreadsheets on PC's, sometimes acquired by finding a way to bypass IT department approval. Then companies like Novell offered "server" PC's that allowed the spreadsheets to be centralized and shared by all the PC's. Departments sometimes did their own network wiring to install "local area networks". The IT department lost control. IBM was not the director of this movie and concentrated on defending the mainframe turf instead of embracing the disruption. The company was in the audience.
The second movie was in the mid 1990's. It was called the the World Wide Web -- a breakthrough application of the Internet. The dissatisfier was that there were many thousands of physicists in the world who wanted to gain access to a huge amount of data being created from particle physics experiments at CERN in Switzerland. The data was created in many different formats and the people wanting to use the data had many different kinds of computers. Enter Tim Berners-Lee with a new document format called HTML and an Internet protocol called HTTP. The result was any computer with a "browser" that could read HTML could get the data they wanted including multi-media. It was a major disruptive change to how all things IT worked. IBM did not sit in the audience for this movie. While Microsoft and Netscape (illegally driven out of business by Microsoft) were fighting over who had the best browser, IBM was making major investments behind the scenes to insure that all of it's hardware and software supported the Internet. In 1996 Lou Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, introduced the term "e-Business". The company developed a layer of middleware called Webshphere that allowed enterprises to link all their applications to the web. This movie made $billions. There is much more to the story than summarized in this short paragraph. Take a look at Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround by Lou Gerstner and Net Attitude by yours truly (now available to read free on the web).
The current movie is about Cloud Computing. IBM is planning for a repeat of the success it had with e-business. This time the dissatisfier is that IT applications have become too too costly and too difficult to use. A good example is Microsoft Office. I call it the "global IT tax". GE decided to confront this by going to cloud computing with Zoho.com. While Google, Zoho, Microsoft, Amazon and countless others are waging "cloud wars" over the consumer, IBM is behind the scenes again this time building a range of cloud offerings for the enterprise -- cloud tools for developers, public clouds to enable more efficient offerings for all of the enterprise's constituencies, private clouds to replace intranets, and research clouds for academia. The offerings announced in June are the tip of the iceberg. Stay tuned for much more from IBM in the clouds.
Much as client-server computing and the Internet transformed how people interact with other people and with data, cloud computing will transform these things yet again. With every computer in the world connected to every other computer through various clouds the potential to deliver data and collaborate around it will dwarf today's capabilities and at a lower unit cost. The data.gov project that Vivek Kundra talked about at the Wired Conference may be a model followed by enterprises. The idea is that when something happens -- a transaction, a widget gets ordered or shipped or had a service issue or a patient sees a doctor or has a procedure, the data will be in the cloud for others (who are authorized) to see it on a real-time basis. This is going to be an exciting movie and we will all be able to watch it in the clouds. (See other stories on cloud computing here at patrickWeb).
Epilogue: IBM has received considerable recognition for leadership with the World Community Grid. The grid can run virtual chemistry experiments to determine which of the millions of small molecules can attach to the influenza virus and inhibit it from spreading. There is the potential to make the world a better place because of this project. If you want to donate your surplus computer time to some of the great causes IBM is working on, take a look at worldcommunitygrid.org. Also, see IBM Happenings for May for more on the influenza project.
There have been a number of stories here about service problems with Comcast. The company claims that it is "easy for you to connect with someone if you have a question about your Comcast service, 24/7". Wishful thinking. It is very difficult to have a relationship with Comcast. They have comcast.com for some things and comcast.net for others. Haven't they heard of a "portal" -- a single door that people can go through to find whatever they need? I have been a happy Vonage customer for years but I fell victim to the "bundle" from Comcast to save $30 per month. So far I am not so sure it was a good move. There have been a handful outages in this first month of use -- today's was several hours.
I can handle a hiccup here and there but the terrible customer service is hard to stomach. I called from the iPhone to report the outage and hopefully to get some information about what was going on. Not a chance. Here is what they said. "Your call is very important to us. We are experiencing heavier than normal call volume. Please call back again later." Click. This is what happens when there is insufficient competition in the market. To complement the outage I received five letters in the postal mail from Comcast. Each was some kind of notice that I had changed a user id or password on comcast.com (or was it comcast.net). Three of the envelopes were unsealed. I could rant on, as many people and journalists do, but. I'll stop for now. Comcasted.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a general term for a family of technologies that enable voice communications over the Internet (and corporate intranets). Strong double-digit growth has placed VoIP into everyday life for many millions of people. In the early days I used Packet8. Then a VoIP system was created by entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and a group of software engineers based in Tallinn, Estonia. I happened to be in Tallinn as part of a Baltic cruise a couple of years ago and wondered why the cobbled streets of a nearly thousand-year old small town on the Baltic Sea was lined with brand new high-end sedans. Later I realized that Tallinn was a mini Silicon Valley and home to the development of Skype. Skype became my "phone" for both SMS messaging but especially for calling home from abroad for free. Skype was a game changer. Beginning last week another game changer has become my phone -- Google Voice.
Like Skype, Google Voice is a free VoIP service in classic Google "beta" test status but I have already adopted it as my preferred service. While attending Demo in San Diego in September 2006, I became a beta tester for a VoIP service called Grand Central. The following year they were acquired by Google and after a quiet period of development, Grand Central was launched as Google Voice. Being a Grand Central beta tester got me an early Google Voice account.
The conversion was simple. I had not been using Grand Central much because there was no way to sync the contact list. With Google Voice you get instant sync with your Gmail contact list. When you start out you get a phone number for most any area code you want. The new number then becomes your only number. When someone calls it your cell phone, your office phone, you home phone, and a vacation home phone all ring. You answer and hear who is calling and press 1 to accept the call. Or for some people that you designate, the call goes straight to voicemail. For others only your cell phone rings. You can add your contacts to different groups and have each group be treated differently. You can "ListenIn" on voicemails as they are being recorded and then decide to enter a conversation. When you receive a voicemail you get an email containing a machine transcription of the message. It is not perfect but good enough that you can tell who it is and what the call is about. You can block callers, record conversations, or add them into an ongoing conference call. Up to four callers can be added to a free conference call. The history tab in Google Voice shows all of your inbound and outbound calls. Needless to say you can search through the history of all your calls to refresh your memory about a conversation you had a year ago. SMS messages and all of your calls have shared inboxes, trash, history, and spam folders just like gmail.
The feature I like the most is that you can install Gizmo -- a free VoIP program that runs on your PC -- and add your SIP number as one of your Google Voice phone numbers. When a call comes in a dialogue box pops up on your display. You click "answer" and then the call can be handled with a headset (I use a Plantronics noise-canceling model) which provides hands-free high quality audio for me and the caller. Another nice feature is that you can make a Google Voice call from your iPhone (or any mobile phone). All U.S. calls are free. A call to Norway is two cents per minute. With free conference calls and a boatload of other free features, Google Voice is going to put the heat on the telephony monopolists. It will also put pressure on eBay's $2.5 billion acquisition of Skype for which they later took a $1.4 billion write-down.
The best way to reach me is still to send an email
but now you can also leave a message for me at Google Voice.
The 15th Annual Genesys Partners Venture Dinner -- Gen XV-- Monday night at the Union League Club in New York attracted more than 100 venture capitalists, investors, journalists, entrepreneurs, and industry executives. As always, Jim Kollegger -- CEO of Genesys Partners and one of the pioneers of the information industry -- was an elegant master of ceremonies. He introduced the various sponsors, next day panelists for the SIIA Conference, several startup CEO's, and a few of us who have been around the block a few times, each to make some comments.
Like a broken record, I offered the normal upbeat view of the future of the Internet but prefaced my remarks by asserting that we are only 5% of the way there. In other words, of all the things that could be done on the Internet that would save us time and make our lives better, only 5% of them are there. It may sound low but consider retail e-commerce. Although there has been continuous and steady growth of retail e-commerce it still represents just over 3% of total retail (as of the end of October). Why isn't it 25% or more? Much written about that here at patrickWeb but the short version is that there are still a lot of lame web sites. "Click here for the location of our nearest dealer where you can buy the product you just found" or "Click here to download this form and fax it to us". And of course there are the ubiquitous clipboards at doctor offices where we take a pen and write information that they already have.
I described one man's view of the evolution of the Internet including the seven characteristics below. This parsed way of looking at the Internet has served me well for quite a few years. The things going on under each area continuously change and Jim asks me once a year to do a thumbnail sketch of my latest thinking.
Fast Broadband in the U.S. is not a pretty story compared to other parts of the world. The problem is that there are too many lobbyists and the FCC is a political organization. I was in Greenland this past August. It is three times the size of Texas, has no trees, and only 50,000 people. The entire population has access to the Internet. When the chairman of the FCC was asked by CNBC why the U.S. was not even in the top ten countries of the world in terms of broadband availability, his reply was that there many rural parts of America!
Always On WiFi is becoming more and more a part of the fabric of the world. Hospitals will soon be replacing their infusion pumps with WiFi infusion pumps that will enable hospital administrators to know where the pumps are, which ones need maintenance, and even allow doctors to adjust drop rates of intravenous solutions via the Internet WiMax continues to struggle. Some believe it will replace WiFi. My bet is on WiFi.
Everywhere Cloud computing has become the mainstay for me and for millions. Whether it is gmail or MobileMe the convenience and reliability of the clouds is compelling. The next big wave is enterprise cloud computing. Virtualization is making enterprise servers more scalable, reliable, and efficient than ever. Broadband in the enterprise likewise. Security models allow remote access for telecommuters and AJAX is enabling applications to run in any browser on any kind of computer including mobile.
Natural Social networking may not be a business model in and unto itself but it is becoming fundamental to all aspects of our economy and society. Integration of social networking with a full range of web applications will evolve to become the primary means of collaboration.
Intelligent
The Semantic Web is the next big turn of the crank. Most web pages have links but do not have context. In other words the words on the page do not necessarily mean anything -- but they could. If a web page said "Join us for a concert by The Eagles at Kimmel Center in Philadelphia next Tuesday" that set of words could have a lot of context. Clicking on it could add the concert to your calendar, knowing what "next Tuesday" means. It would also know exactly where the Kimmel Center is and that The Eagles is a performing group that performs a particular genre and your music player would receive a list of suggestions of music they have recorded or links to live concerts under way at the moment. This is the tip of the iceberg. The semantic web will lead us to a point where most of the interactions of web pages will be between computers not between computers and people.
Easy
Technology isn't the easiest thing at times. There are many dimensions to "easy" but one good example is the Nintendo Wii. At a local senior center, members find the Wii to be their exercise coach. It is not just for kids!
Trusted
This is the big one. Will we trust the Internet? Security technology is available to achieve much higher levels of security than presently deployed both at enterprise and consumer levels. The bigger issue will be privacy. Banks have our personal information and they are using it. Healthcare insurers have more information about our health than our doctors do. Nevertheless, there is much to be optimistic about when it comes to electronic medical records. Maybe 5% of doctors and hospitals use them but this will likely rise fast and the result will be better care, better outcomes, and fewer errors. And, fewer clipboards.
One might properly conclude from prior stories that I have become a real believer in Cloud Computing. From a personal perspective, the vision is simple. All of my documents, contacts, calendar entries, photos, music, patrickWeb content, and backup files safely and securely kept in various clouds. All contacts, calendar entries, and selected songs and pictures, and email synchronized and accessible on the iPhone. Everything else accessible via the iPhone browser or any browser or any computer, anywhere, anytime. It is that simple. Oh, how I wish. The vision is attainable and I am confident that it will happen in 2009 -- but, there is a way to go.
Let's start with the easy parts. Effective and simple backup has been elusive for me for decades and much has been written here about the subject. Finally, a solution is in place that I am comfortable with. It has two parts to it. First is idrive.com. The service is free for up to 2 GB. You simply identify which files and folders are critical and it keeps them backed up in the idrive cloud. Very simple interface and you can't beat the price. I have been using the service on two Windows ThinkPads in the house and have been extremely pleased with how it works..
The other half of the solution is the Iomega one terabyte StorCenter. The six-pound marvel plugs right into the home LAN in the basement. Very inexpensive and easy to setup. I use it to back up really big files and Linux ThinkPads. It is set up as an I: drive and is accessible just like the C: drive. It is connected via gigabit ethernet so copying files to and from the box is lightning fast. Like the predecessor I had been using for years, it is RAID storage, so there are always redundant copies of everything. The box is smaller than half a shoe box and it uses roughly $3 per month in electricity. The predecessor used $30 per month, so the justification to spend $250 on the StorCenter was very simple.
There are two applications on my desktop that keep me chained to Windows and which I backup every time I use them. First is Quicken, which I I have been using since Release 1.0 back in the early 1980's. As I wrote in Net Attitude seven years ago, the web version is not a viable alternative. Unfortunately, that is still true today. In theory a web-based application like Mint.com and others could replace Quicken but they just are not up to it quite yet. The other workhorse for me is Dreamweaver, which I use to manage patrickWeb. In theory there are many web based alternatives but I have yet to find one that is as powerful and easy to use. Eventually, I expect both of these to be "in the clouds" but not quite yet.
Now, on to the more interesting things. Photos are all in the Picasa cloud and music is in iTunes. No particular issues with either of them. Next is email. I started using email in the early 1980's with a system at IBM called PROFS. In 1994 the company email system became Lotus Notes. I was an early adopter and in the beginning there was nobody to send email to! When I e-tired in 2001 I switched to Microsoft Outlook so I could be like everybody else that I attended tech conferences with. As with many people I know, it developed into a love-hate relationship. The Lotus and Microsoft mail solutions are great in many respects but in a way you are chained to someone's central infrastructure with them. I was looking for freedom. Along came gmail and, bingo, I was liberated. Or so I thought. The mail part of it was easy. Gmail is lightning fast and although it is a "cloud" application with all the user functionality appearing in the browser, it acts like a desktop application and I can use it on the Ubuntu Linux ThinkPad in the kitchen, a Windows PC in the workshop, or any computer anywhere. And freedom from Outlook -- almost, expect for contacts and calendar entries, my lifeblood.
Contacts and calendar entries were still in Outlook but they synchronized with MobileMe which in turn synchronized with the iPhone. Seems a bit convoluted but it worked. Some occasional glitches but it was acceptable. How to add a new contact or modify a calendar entry? Could do it with Outlook but that would defeat the purpose behind my strategy. MobileMe might actually be the perfect cloud application. It was awkward at first and Apple definitely had some problems as chronicled here before, but I began to get used to it. Apple appeared to have fixed the most serious bugs, and I actually began to like it. However, as I got to be really dependent on MobileMe I found a lot of shortcomings. Calendar invitations did not work. Contacts would at times "go missing". The MobileMe page would hang up in certain browsers under certain conditions. Bottom line -- MobileMe proved to be extremely slow and unreliable. It had to go. It became clear that the solution was Google contacts and Google calendar. I was getting sucked in -- just as Google no doubt hopes we all will. Quickly getting over the issue of having all my eggs in Google's basket, the bigger issue became how to get there from here.
MobileMe not only has huge performance problems it is also a closed proprietary system, just like iTunes and most everything Apple does. Some people fear Google but what gives me comfort is that they use Internet standards and they provide both import and export from any of their applications. Their only lock on you is that their stuff works really well and you get addicted. MobileMe is a one way system -- easy to import things to it but you can not export. Maybe you can if you have a Mac but not with the hodgepodge of Windows and Linux systems on my home LAN. No problem. I synched back to Outlook, exported from Outlook, and then imported to Google. Good riddance to MobileMe. Now everything is in Google. Calendar invitations work. Contacts are nicely integrated with the calendar and with email and with maps and documents that I choose to share. Microsoft has good reason to fear Google. Their cloud approach is far superior to the heavy-weight desktop approach of Outlook and Office. Google is not without faults, however. There are issues when importing and at one point I lost all the contacts and calendar entries and had to stitch everything back together from various snippets and backups. It was worth the pain.
Google Docs is still a work in progress but highly worth using. You can email documents to Google docs but not pdf files. You can upload pdfs but only one at a time. There are issues with printing certain things and various other shortcomings, but having documents in the cloud assures they are continuously backed up. You can share them with others and work on them anytime from anywhere.
The biggest gap with the Google cloud is that it doesn't synchronize contacts and calendar entries with the iPhone. Ooops. I am sure they want to offer synch and that it is not a technical issue. It is an Apple issue for sure. I found two third-party applications in the app store that not only work with Google but also provide extra functionality on the iPhone than the basic calendar and contact manager that comes with it. I can recommend them both -- SaiSuke calendar and Sync in a Blink for contacts. I am sure Google will soon offer their own iPhone synchronization soon.
If this all sounds complicated -- it is. I have spent many hours getting to this point but I am a happy camper. More importantly, I am confident it will get better and better and I am almost no longer chained to my PC. Almost everything is in the clouds!
There is something about clouds that brings the term into our daily lives. We say "it is a cloudy day", or "there is not a cloud in the sky", or if we feel especially elated or happy we might say "I feel like I am on cloud nine". Nowadays many are talking about "cloud computing". Sometimes we just say something is "in the cloud". It means different things to different people. The goal of this story is to share what cloud computing means to me, personally. In a way it is simple, but in a way it is profound.
In the early days of the Internet we thought of it as made up of three parts. First there was a discrete collection of specialized computers called routers which moved packets of ones and zeroes between origin and destination. Secondly was another set of computers called servers which contained emails and web pages, and finally the networking infrastructure including telephone wires, modems, and various networking devices such as hubs and switches that loosely tied everything together. Users of the Internet today that are not aware of this technical history -- which is the vast majority of the world's billion + users -- know the Internet for it's most popular application, the World Wide Web. In a sense, the web is a "place" that contains all of the information and applications that we want to use.
In more recent years the larger web application providers, such as Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, and others have begun to refer to their infrastructure as "clouds". If you create a spreadsheet at Google Docs and then save it, where is it actually saved? In the Google "cloud". We don't know where it really is -- it is just "there" at http://docs.google.com --- in the "cloud". There are many millions of servers on the Internet but to most people there may as well just be one. That is the beauty of the Internet -- you don't have to know what the infrastructure is or how it works. But suppose the spreadsheet you create and save at Google Docs happens to be your personal financial plan with income, taxes, assets, liabilities and estate plans. Do you trust Google with this information? There are multiple dimensions to the question and answers. From my perspective it is important to compare the risk to that of keeping such data on your own computer.
I have been using IBM ThinkPads since 1992. They are very reliable -- but they do break. Hard drives are mechanical devices that fail; not often but they fail. How many people keep their data backed up? The minority. Does Google keep your data backed up? I completely trust them on this and have no doubt that their commitment and execution on backup is better than mine. The Google File System is very sophisticated and distributed. I don't know where my data is exactly but I know it is not at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California. In fact I am sure it is replicated around the world and combined on the fly as needed. From a security perspective there are some risks but Google does support document transfer using encryption and I suspect their security will get better and better over time. I suspect they have excellent programs to protect against employee intrusion and disaster recovery.According to Safeware Insurance Agency in Columbus, Ohio, more than 600,000 laptops are stolen or lost every year. I doubt if Google's computers will be lost or stolen.
I was skeptical about using Google's gmail in the beginning because I was hooked on the Outlook client. Not that I really liked Outlook but it has the look and feel of the desktop. Generally speaking Outlook performs well and you can work on things without waiting for the network. Gmail on the other hand is an online web application. The surprise to me has been how fast gmail performs -- especially when using the Google Chrome browser which executes the program instructions which are stored in the gmail webpage at lightning speed. At this point I would say not only does it perform as well as a desktop application but is actually faster for most of the things I tend to do -- like looking for something in my archive of more than 30,000 emails. What about when I am not connected to the Internet? There actually are ways to work offline but in reality, and considering the great gmail support in the iPhone, I am almost always connected. When it comes to email, I have moved to a cloud. My email is still john@patrickweb.com but my server forwards everything to my gmail account which where I access it.
Cloud computing has been around for years, we just didn't call it that. What has changed is that it has become easy. If I add an appointment or a contact to my iPhone, a few seconds later it is accessible at me.com/calendar or me.com/contacts. Likewise if I make a change at me.com, the change is reflected a few seconds later on my iPhone. Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange have had this synchronization capability for many years but it was Apple that has made it really simple. So simple, that they explain it simply by saying that your data is in the MobileMe cloud.
Spreadsheets, presentations, text documents, email, contacts, calendar -- all in the clouds. What is not in the cloud? There still remain, for the moment, some applications that cling to the Windows or Mac desktop. The biggest example is Quicken. It is a large and complex application with intense graphics and sophisticated interaction. Can it be done with javascript in the browser. like gmail? I have no doubt, but not so far. Quicken.com and mint.com and others are going after it but at this stage they have not been able to replicate what Quicken does on the desktop. There are other examples, such as Adobe Dreamweaver and other sophisticated tools, but ultimately everything that most of us need will be in the clouds.
Will everything be in the Google cloud? They make a compelling case, but I don't think so. There was a time when pundits said that IBM was taking over the world. Later the pundits said Microsoft was taking over the world. Now some say it will be Google. The world is a big place. There are billions of people out there and large numbers of clouds they will utilize. In fact more and more clouds are being formed. Startup companies these days do not bother with the details of their Internet infrastructure. Many of them use the Amazon cloud. The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (aka Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides "resizable" compute capacity in the cloud. For storage, many companies use the Amazon Simple Storage Service (aka Amazon S3) to enable storage in the cloud. The advent of cloud computing has made it possible for startup companies to get from new business idea to a full implementation of their idea in weeks instead of months.
Great for smaller companies but what about the really big companies like GE, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, Bank of America, BP, or Toyota? How about when they have a new web-based idea? How do they deploy it? Generally speaking it takes a lot of detailed planning. The project manager has to specify exactly what resource is needed -- a very specific computing capacity and well defined storage. In many cases it is difficult to be precise when an idea is new. They could use Google or Amazon but chances are they would prefer to have their own cloud. The large companies of the world have vast computing resources and skills and they also have a desire to keep things inside their own tent for various security and intellectual property reasons. Enter IBM and their new plans for "Blue Cloud".
"Blue Cloud" is a series of cloud computing offerings that will allow corporate data centers to operate more like the Internet startup companies by enabling computing across a distributed, globally accessible fabric of resources, rather than today's predominantly local machines or remote server farms. Blue Cloud technology will make it possible to have the computing resource and storage be specified in "virtual" terms and the cloud will do the provisioning in an automated manner using virtual resources. Underneath the cloud there are real resources but the cloud computing environment manages them in an autonomic way. That means that the cloud responds somewhat like the human body. When we get cold we shiver to warm up. When we get hot we sweat to cool down. In a similar fashion, the Blue Cloud will automatically add computing resources and storage on demand and when something breaks the cloud will provide alternate paths to keep things running. The project is based on open standards and open source software supported by IBM's hardware, software, and services businesses.
Blue Cloud will not replace the computing infrastructure of the world's enterprises any time soon but over time, this new approach to IT should dramatically reduce the complexity and costs of managing Internet projects. Ultimately, most computing may be done in the clouds and billions of people will be interacting with data and applications with handheld devices that will be more powerful than the supercomputers of just a few years ago.
Amazon is one of the few web sites that really has their act together. In the Fall of 1995, I made a presentation to a group of CEOs about the Internet. I showed them various web sites that I was fascinated with at the time, mostly related to engineering, scientific, government and academic projects. The word e-business had not yet been coined by IBM and there were not many exciting business web sites. One that seemed quite novel though was a site called Amazon.com. I asked for a show of hands from those who had heard of Amazon. Not a single hand went up.
Amazon opened its virtual doors in July 1995 with a mission to "use the Internet to transform book buying into the fastest, easiest, and most enjoyable shopping experience possible". During the next few years Amazon became very popular and it was hailed as not only the best web site, but also as the new model of how businesses of all kinds would operate. The stock climbed from obscurity to a market capitalization of nearly $50 billion. (See other stories about Amazon in patrickWeb)
Amazon customer service is second to none. In more than a dozen years I have never once heard of a disgruntled customer. The company continues to innovate. The Kindle has been a joy. Many of us have talked about "wrap rage" when it comes to packaging. Amazon is actually doing something about it. Fortunately, Jeff Bezos has small children and has experienced the impossibility of opening toys so he has pressured manufacturers to stop their bad packaging habits and has introduced Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging.
Some years ago I enabled an Amazon Store page here on patrickWeb. If someone buys via a link from the site a small commission is generated. It amounts to less than $50 per year and more than all of it goes to charity. I just like the idea of providing a link to a retailer that I think does a really great job for customers. Forecasters are saying that online sales are not going to be so great this year. Could be, but I would not be surprised to see Amazon beat expectations. They are starting the shopping season aggressively with their Black Friday Sale.
The month of October was a busy one for IBM, filled as usual with a slew of announcements in hardware, software, and services, but the highlight for the quarter has been a speech by IBM Chairman Sam Palmisano in which he outlined "A smarter planet: the next leadership agenda" at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on Nov. 6, 2008. Sam has lead a number of global conferences on innovation over the past five years to raise consciousness about how the world of business has been changing. At the Business Leadership Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia eighteen months ago he described how globalization has evolved -- international companies became multinational companies and have now become globally integrated companies. As IBM has preached and practiced, becoming a globally integrated enterprise means locating operations and functions anywhere in the world based on the right cost, the right skills, and the right business environment. (IBM now has more than 10,000 employees in China and more than 50,000 in India). But now the world has changed -- again -- and leaders of businesses and institutions everywhere have a unique opportunity to transform not just the way the world is but the way the world works.
Sam said that the crisis in our financial markets has "jolted us awake to the realities and dangers of highly complex global systems". He went on to describe how the movement of information, work and capital across developed and developing nations is just one aspect of global integration. New factors are entering the equation -- global climate change, environmental and geopolitical issues surrounding energy, and the global supply chains for food and medicine. "We are all now connected -- economically, technically and socially. But we're also learning that being connected is not sufficient. Yes, the world continues to get "flatter." And yes, it continues to get smaller and more interconnected". All this pales in comparison to something happening that holds even greater potential.
In a word, Sam says, "our planet is becoming smarter". What he means is the infusion of intelligence into the way the world works. This is being made possible as the world becomes densely populated with electronic chips. Not only a couple of billion people on the Internet, twice that with mobile phones but also tens of billions of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags will allow for much more automation and efficiency across entire ecosystems—supply-chains, healthcare networks, cities… even natural systems like rivers. As all of these become interconnected, they will be able to "talk" to one another and share information about where they are and what they are doing. An enormous amount of information will be created from cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, and pipelines. Sam painted a future where supercomputers will turn mountains of data into intelligence that can be "translated into action, making our systems, processes and infrastructures more efficient, more productive and responsive—in a word, smarter".
Not only will it be possible to implement a smarter interconnected world -- it will be essential to our survival. The growth of the past decade has caused a lot of inefficiencies to creep into our global systems. For example in electrical production, there are losses of electrical energy because the grids are not "smart" enough to avoid brownouts and to intelligently distribute excess energy where it is needed. Congested roadways in the U.S. cost $78 billion annually in wasted time and fuel. Consumer product and retail industries lose about $40 billion annually due to supply chain inefficiencies. Healthcare systems don't link diagnosis, to drug discovery, to healthcare delivery, to insurers, nor to patients. On top of that, the planet's water supply is drying up, one in five people lacks access to safe drinking water, and half the world's population does not have adequate sanitation.
Sam says that our financial markets problem will be analyzed for decades, but he says one thing is already clear. Financial institutions did a great job of spreading their risks around but they were not able to track what risks they actually had and quantify them. That uncertainly undermined confidence and things unraveled from there.
The good news is that all the challenges Sam described lend themselves to systems and technology solutions. There are many proof points already. Sam did not talk about IBM's role but he obviously did not pick examples that his competitors worked on. Stockholm's automated traffic system has resulted in 20 percent less traffic, a 12 percent drop in emissions and a reported 40,000 additional daily users of public transport. Intelligent oil field technologies increase both pump performance and well productivity—in a business where only 20-30 percent of available reserves are currently extracted. Smart food systems such as one now running in the Nordics use RFID technology to trace meat and poultry from the farm through the supply chain to supermarket shelves. ActiveCare Network monitors 2 million patients in 38 states for the proper delivery of injections and vaccines.
All of these projects and many more lead to competitiveness in a globally integrated economy. "From the boardroom to the kitchen table, people everywhere are ready, eager for a new way of doing things". Sam called it a "time for courage and vision, a period of opportunity". The New York Times summed up the speech as "IBM Has Tech Answer for Woes of Economy". Certainly a lot of opportunity for IBM but the speech also relates to the company's corporate responsibility.
This epilogue to the "Open, Please!" blog posting is based on feedback from a Canadian reader who agrees that overly aggressive marketers intrude on our private lives, but feels there is a "rub". He says that if you "filter" your email or snail mail without actually opening it, you will occasionally miss something very important. While I agree that something important might be overlooked in the very short term, I have concluded for me that the time, effort, and cost to examine the 80% of incoming mail which is spam is hard to justify on any basis.
The Canadian reader offers up an example of the difficulties that can be encountered if in fact you do miss something important. Three years ago, his insurance broker decided to move all their home insurance clients to a new insurer. I suspect that the original contract gave the insurer the right to do this under certain circumstaces. The new insurer, sent a letter describing payment terms, asking for credit card information, etc. Since the Canadian had no prior experience with the new insurer, he assumed their letters were junk mail and discarded the letter and subsequent dunning notices. Meanwhile the Canadian cancelled his insurance policy for other reasons. Following this his bank was informed him that the house was no longer insured, and sent a letter informing him that his mortgage was being cancelled for not having kept his insurance current.
The Canadian's point was that physical mail has some legal standing that email does not and that spammers rely on this perception to get us to open their physical mail. Actually, if there is a need or desire to use phycial mail for something "important" that would support the rationale for certified mail, Fedex, etc. A number of profitable multi-billion-dollar overnight delivery businesses have been built based on the need for physical delivery of letters.
I find it hard to justify the physical delivery of a letter. At the same time, I find it nearly impossible for anyone to say that they have not missed any "important" when they install filters. My theory has always been that if there is something really important I am trying to get to someone, that there are other means. Asking a friend of the recipient to forward a copy of the information, for example, or even resorting to the telephone. If you have something really important to get delivered, you will find a way. If your goal is to deliver 25,000,000 mails about how to strike it rich or modify human body parts, then I have no sympathy.
The month of September was a month, as usual for IBM, filled with a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. The list of announcements made during the month is here. Included was the revelation that IBM scientists had unlocked the secret of the Kondo Effect. The scientists at IBM's Almaden Research Center in California have forged many breakthroughs over the years.
The Almaden center, which is set on 690 acres in the foothills above Silicon Valley, has a rich history of technical inventions including the disk storage drive, the relational database, and a bevy of innovations in nanotechnology and spintronics.
The latest breakthrough from Almaden's staff of 400 researchers and visiting staff is that they have unlocked the "Secret of the Kondo Effect". If you haven't heard of the Kondo effect, you are not alone. Scientists around the world have been studying the intriguing phenomenon in fundamental
physics for decades. The Kondo effect is one of the few examples in physics where many particles collectively behave as one object. Clear as mud? For me too, but discovery of how this works represents a major advance in the understanding of some fundamental physical phenomena and it may have a major impact on the development of future nanoscale magnetic devices. What that means is that our mobile phones will have more storage capacity than large computers do. Assuming that Internet bandwidth continues to expand it will mean that a vast amount of the world's data will be stored in clouds.
Last month's Konference Sarfarissoq in Nuuk was hosted by Brian Pedersen, the CEO of Tele-Post Greenland, and the focus was the impact of the submarine cable which will soon bring broadband Internet to Greenland. A traditional kayak enabled the symbolic landing. The big news since my August trip is the actual arrival of the Alcatel cable-laying ship which brought the trans-Atlantic fiber optic cable Qaqortoq on Sept. 8th and to Nuuk on the 11th. It was a milestone event and the citizens of both towns were understandably excited. They will be even more so when the cable gets hooked up and the fiber is no longer dark.
Brian Pedersen, the chairman Kaj Egede, the mayor and a cabinet minister received the cable it at the shore. The new submarine cable will include four strands of glass, well protected in a multi-layer set of metal and petrol based materials to allow it to survive buried three feet below the bottom of the ocean -- in some areas as deep as 10,000 feet below the surface. The four glass fibers will have a capacity of 2 terabits per second. Compared to what the country of Greenland has today this will be a nearly infinite jump.
The cable is nearly 3,000 miles long and links Greenland to Canada and Iceland. Greenland currently connects to the internet via satellite with slow speeds and at times unreliable service. The fiber broadband link will open new opportunities for Greenland as a hub between North America and Europe. In addition to serving as an alternate route for digital traffic, Greenland's central location may get the attention of companies building Cloud Computing datacenters. Perhaps the Arctic climate could help keep the servers cool.
DEMO continues to be my favorite conference -- the semi-annual event took place this past week in San Diego, California. It was an uneventful trip from Palo Alto, where I had visited Mediazone, and on to San Francisco for a flight with Southwest (possibly the best airline in operation in the states) to San Diego to join the DEMO opening reception.
There were some key trends that were reinforced at DEMO again this year. Many companies in some way talked about mobile. Most companies either provide a web service or use web services as their platform. The term "cloud" is seeping into the vocabulary. Most companies were media related in some way or provided or used social networking. None of these things are new, by any means, but DEMO confirmed their strategic importance and demonstrated significant implementations. I don't think any of them have cracked the code so to speak but there were many that had exciting visions and demos. I visited the ones in which I had the most interest. Chris Shipley kicked off the conference with insightful comments about the industry. (See the Demo blog for more on her thoughts). She talked about how the web has evolved from banking and buying things to a social web with a lot of user generated content to a web that will create real market value. Only a small percent of Internet users actually take advantage of the potential of the social web. This next phase will bring down the barriers: syndication, distribution, constant connectivity, on demand and lead to the distributed web. There will be new devices, new protocols beyond the desktop and mobile. Collaboration will become purposeful, not just "social". All this will be accompanied with advances in usability, security, and authentication.
The Demo conference allows entrepreneurs to show off new gadgets, software, hardware and business ideas and enables the press, analysts, investors, and technology enthusiasts to assess what they see. The product introductions that take place reveal key technology trends over the coming 12 to 18 months. This year there were 72 companies showing off -- each getting six minutes on stage to tell their story. Chris screens the companies and introduces them to the audience. After the main tent sessions the attendees get to visit with the companies in the "Demo Hall". There isn't time to visit all of them so I try to
be selective -- I visited 25 of the companies this time. Some of the ones I found interesting follow. They are in no particular order.
If you asked me which of the 72 launches I found most interesting I would have to say Telnic, Ltd., the "dot tel" company. Having yourname.tel will allow you to store, update and publish all your contact information and web links directly on the Internet. This is not a web service -- the data is actually stored in the infrastructure of the Internet. The heart of the Internet is the DNS -- the Domain Name System. Among other tasks, the DNS translates humanly-meaningful domain names (like amazon.com) to the numerical address (like 72.21.210.11). The names and numbers are stored in special purpose computers that are scattered around the world. With dot tel, companies or individuals will be able to have their contact information stored there too. It will be the one official place to have directories for people and companies. You will be able to choose how much information you want public (maybe just your name and your web site or blog address) and which data you want to be private.The private information will be encrypted and can be selectively shared with people or organizations that you authorize. People will be able to reach you on their mobile with the touch of a button through the dot tel directory. No web site or hosting is involved. I think this will be a big deal.
Plastic Logic, Ltd. showed an e-book that can display full-sized documents. It is like an 8.5 x 11 Kindle and will replace a briefcase full of documents. It was sort of a computer but not really a computer. I am a bit skeptical on this one.
A number of companies showed how the web is gradually replacing television as we know it. Use your favorite search engine and take a look at
Awind Inc.,
RealNetworks, Inc.,
beeTV,
RemoTV, Inc.,
Invision TV, LLC, and
ffwd.com, Inc. Or just revisit the DEMO Conference Agenda for links to what Chris and team thought about them.
A handful of companies showed products that make creating, sharing, and consuming digital bits more enjoyable. See
UGA Digital, Inc.,
Trinity Convergence, Inc.,
Blue Lava Technologies, Inc.,
Kadoo Inc.,
MixMatchMusic, Ltd.,
Photrade, LLC,
MeDeploy, and
The Echo Nest Corp. Photrade is yet another company in the digital photography space. They will allow you to share and protect photos you take, purchase photos that others have taken, and make money from your photos. With the plummeting of high quality digital cameras and the availability of software that can make an amateur photo look professional there is a growing market here.
Mobile will become a bigger and bigger part of our lives.
Maverick Mobile Solutions, Pvt. Ltd. has a solution that protects your phone in case you lose it. It sets off various bells and whistles. Not a bad idea as we put more and more personal data on our phones.
G.ho.st lets you put your PC on your mobile phone. You have to see it to believe it.
WebDiet claims to make losing weight and getting healthy easy by using your mobile phone to enter everything you eat and get an analysis that optimizes your diet. If you want to chat and share more with your friends take a look at Xumii.
There were more than a half-dozen companies showing off new ideas for protecting and managing digital assets. As we move more and more of our pictures, conversations, movies, notes, documents, etc. to the digital world, the security of them becomes more and more important. One of the companies I found quite interesting in this area is Usable Security Systems, Inc. UsableLogin is their product and what they are trying to do is make passwords as we know them obsolete and give us secure access to any web site. All you have to do is recognize a picture you have chosen and remember one simple codeword to log in securely. Some of us have more than 100 login/password pairs. I think Usable may have a problem getting some banking sites to cooperate but even if just 80% of the sites you visit could be handled with a single password that would be a very good thing. The Founder & CEO, Rachna Dhamija, did her PhD in security at Berkely and she gave a very good demo. See it here.
As a security aside, if you use Gmail, I highly recommend selecting the https option in the settings. This doesn't guarantee security but it does insure that the data going back and forth between your computer and Google is encrypted.
There were many more great demos. Browse your way through the DEMO Conference Agenda and see what catches your eye.
The flight back to New York on American Airlines offered an unexpected surprise. GoGoInflight offered broadband Internet service. The price was $12.95 and the performance was excellent. I ran a speedtest and found the results to be better than what I get from Comcast Cable at home. The WiFi connection works with both laptops and any mobile phone that has WiFi (like the iPhone).
The 4:45 AM departure from home last Sunday was not a barrel of fun but the flight to San Francisco was uneventful and was followed by a visit with Mediazone in Palo Alto where they were having a management conference.
Mediazone is an extremely interesting company that I was not previously familiar with. They are based in Palo Alto but are owned by a company called Naspers -- a $2.6 billion media giant in South Africa (a part of the world I had been fortunate enough to visit in March). Mediazone creates and operates a set of targeted social media destinations, centered on passionate audience interests that incorporate a rich set of video, audio, text, community and interactive user controls.
An example would be their RugbyZone -- if you like Rugby you would surely love RugbyZone. This is just one of Mediazone's highly targeted segments of content. They don't try to be all things to all people but they do go very deep in their specific "vertical" segments such as Rugby, Motorcross, Wimbledon Live, and IndyCar. I have always believed that other than perhaps Google, specialized web sites have the most to offer. Ten years ago I was an advisory board member at space.com and we found tremendous interest on the part of "space junkies". People who care about a narrow segment tend to be deeply interested. They are willing to register and participate in the community of users and generate content themselves. The challenge is how to make money at facilitating the community and providing high-value content.
The answer is elusive and nobody has cracked the code just yet. The Wall Street Journal has a subscription model where subscribers pay $99 per year. They have unique content and a broad array of tools and content creditability. Most sites are not able to command such a fee. The dominant model today is advertising wherein sites are able to get a premium fee from the advertisers who want to reach a targeted audience. Someone selling rugby shoes is presumably willing to pay more for an ad at RugbyZone than for an ad at a "horizontal" site which may have more visitors but not the narrow interest. Another model is Weather Underground. For an annual fee of $10 you get a version of the site that has much less advertising. In other words you pay to not get advertising. I don't claim to have the answer but my advice on the topic is always the same -- offer great service and offer choices. A membership site might charge $69 per year for a standard subscription, $89, for an "ad free" version, and $29 for subscribers who are willing to accept unlimited advertising and provide profile information about their desires. When combined with great service, careful listening to the feedback, trying new models, and iterating quickly the result will be the highest possible odds of finding the right model.
On from Palo Alto to San Francisco on Southwest (possibly the best airline in operation in the states) to San Diego to join the opening reception at Demo.
The month of August is a slow one in many parts of the business world -- but not at IBM. where the month was filled with a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. The list of announcements made during the month is here. One of the many interesting projects involved helping preserve Alaskan language and culture. LitSite Alaska is bringing native language and stories to life using IBM technology which converts to text to audible speech.
The LitSite Alaska interactive Web site has a wealth of information, insights and stories about the history, diversity, culture and traditions of Alaskans and the IBM speech technology is bringing the stories life. A visitor could just read the stories but Alaskans believe that the ancient tradition of oral storytelling is more effective and it helps preserve native Alaskan language and culture. The oral tradition, an integral part of the lives of Alaska Natives, is in fact essential to learning and to passing on cultural knowledge and life skills. More than 1,000 pages of text have been enhanced with audio files using the IBM WebSphere Voice Server text-to-speech software. The audio files even include uncommon pronunciations of Alaskan native names and words such as KwaashKiKwaan, Tlingit, and Inupiaq. These words remind me of things I heard in Greenland.
This was my first trip to Greenland and Iceland. I have been fortunate to visit many countries around the world but have never been to these two unique places. Thanks to Tele-Post Greenland for having the Konference Sarfarissoq in Nuuk.It was a tremendously educational experience and we now have many new friends. I can't wait to hear about the day when the submarine cable is no longer "dark fiber". If you would like a pdf of the combined stories, you can find it here.
The Konference Sarfarissoq took place in Nuuk -- the capital of Greenland -- at the Katuaq cultural center. The conference began with a Greenlandic dinner at the Hotel Hans Egede (the only hotel in Nuuk) and included an A cappella singing performance by a group of natively dressed Inuit men and women. It was quite a treat. The food included Musk Ox, reindeer, shrimp, haddock and many other delicious foods. It was a very nice opportunity to get acquainted with Brian Pedersen, the conference host and CEO of Tele-Post Greenland, and the other speakers and spouses, and of course Anders Laesoe, Santa Claus’s chief helper..
Brian Pedersen kicked off the conference by describing how the Tele-Post vision of a "Global Greenland" continues but the mission is changing from “communication without borders” to "a global Greenland - in the middle of the world". He said the submarine cable would put Greenland on the net in a way that creates Safarissoq -- the name for the part of a stream where the speed accelerates. The result he said will be to strengthen the economy of the country and create new jobs.
Flemming Jensen then took the stage in his tuxedo and began an eloquent speech. It was in Danish and I did not understand a word of it but people began to laugh. At first I thought he was just a good speaker with some added humor but by the time the audience was nearly rolling on the floor in laughter I realized he was something much more. I later found out he is an actor, director, and comedian from Copenhagen. His multiple appearances on stage added a great deal to the conference.
Jesper Refiner had the toughest job at the conference. He was responsible for the overall program including the roles, rules, logistics, flow, support and administration. He did not a marvelous job of coordination and only one person let him down. A translator had been hired to enable non-Danish speaking attendees (like me) to listen through headsets. The headsets were available but due to ideal hunting conditions in the North and labor rules to the left, the translator called in "sick". I believe my wife and I were the only ones of 250 attendees that only understand one language, so although we enjoyed meeting many new friends and speaking with them in English, the conference was 99% in Danish.
Preben Mejer, a founder and distinguished technologist of innovationlab, set the technical stage with a broad view of consumers on the net to 3D printing to intelligent band aids. After lunch, yours truly gave a talk (unfortunately I could not do it in Danish) about "The Future of the Internet". I won't repeat my key messages which can be found throughout this blog. In a short TV interview afterward a reporter asked what impact the emergence of broadband in Greenland would have on the "remote" areas of the country. As she asked the question it came to me that the impact will be that there will be no such thing as "remote". A great idea from any part of Greenland will be shared with the rest of the world and vice versa. Tom Friedman had it right -- the world is flat.
Speaking of broadband, Lars Tofft -- president of Ericsson Denmark -- drilled down on what broadband is all about. He painted a vision of mobile broadband being much faster in the not too distant future than wired broadband is today. This will open up the possibilities that Preben and I had outlined earlier. Like the other presenters, I could not understand the words they said but I could tell from the slides that all the speakers were all on the same page.
Day 2 focused on applications: e-Home, e-Health, e-Ducation, e-Citizen, and e-Trade. The speakers were all superb and then there were buses to take people to local venus such as the hospital to see the applications in action. Søren Duus Østergaard from IBM Denmark did an excellent job of summarizing the day in his blog.
Throughout the conference there were demonstrations in the lobby of the Katuaq cultural center and the public was invited to visit. There were crowds throughout both days right up to the end. There were many school children who visited and they loved seeing and holding the Pleo baby dinosaur. One of the other big draws was 3D printing. It was amazing to see a nice vase "printed" each few hours. The most impressive demo to me was the haptic feedback device. It is a bit hard to describe -- one of those tings you need to "feel" to believe. You move the hand-held cursor over a "rough" object and you can "feel" it in the device you are holding on to. A lady described how she was planning to sell seal skin purses on the web by allowing people to be able to "feel" the texture of the skin on-line. The potential for engineering collaboration is quite evident.
The flight from Nuuk to Keflavik on the way home was uneventful and followed by a 45 minute ride to downtown Reykjavik. Unfortunately it was cold and raining but it was still a nice walk around the harbor and the city. Dinner at Laekjarkrekka was outstanding. I added it as a five-star in the favorites. The flight back to JFK was followed by a short flight to Mt. Pocono and then a half-hour drive back to the lake. It was nice to get back but we have fond memories of new friends and a place we had never before visited.
Thoughts about the conference to follow shortly, but since Greenland is such a unique place, it deserves some comments first. Greenland is actually part of the Kingdom of Denmark and is the world's largest island -- about 80% ice-capped. The history is a bit complicated but it is certain that the the culture started with the Eskimo people who inhabited the high arctic tundra from Siberia across to Alaska and Canada to Greenland after the Ice Age.
Vikings reached the island in the 10th century from Iceland and Danish colonization began in the 18th century. Greenland was made an integral part of Denmark in 1953 and joined the EU in 1973, but withdrew in 1985 in a dispute over fishing quotas. Greenland was granted self-government in 1979 although Denmark continues to exercise control of Greenland's foreign affairs in consultation with Greenland's Home Rule Government. A vote by the people is coming up shortly to determine if Greenland should become a fully independent country. It would be presumptuous of me to say I know the Greenlandic people, but I can say from what I saw on the flight from Iceland and around the area of downtown Nuuk, that the Inuit people are attractive, hopeful, and very self-sufficient. Like all counties there are those that are dependent on the government but in Greenland it seems most people can live happily from the bounty of the land.
Greenland is slightly more than three times the size of Texas and is very rich in natural resources including coal, iron ore, lead, zinc, molybdenum, diamonds, gold, platinum, niobium, tantalite, uranium and, of course, fish, seals, and whales. Hydropower is also natural and there is the possibility of oil and gas. A priority is the protection of the arctic environment and the Inuit traditional way of life, including whaling and seal hunting.
Internet connectivity in Greenland is via satellite. It works but is not very fast and not always reliable. The new submarine cable, currently being laid at the bottom of the ocean, will include four strands of glass, well protected in a multi-layer set of metal and petrol based materials to allow it to buried three feet below the bottom of the ocean -- in some areas as deep as 10,000 feet below the surface. The four glass fibers will have a capacity of 2 terabits per second. Compared to what the country of Greenland has today this will be a nearly infinite jump. The purpose of the conference was to discuss the potential that the increased bandwidth will offer. More on that to come.
There are some pictures in the photo gallery. As usual, I have to confess that I am not a very good photographer. The iPhone takes pretty good pictures in good sunlight but unfortunately we did not have any of that during the trip. Greenland is a beautiful place and hopefully some of the pictures will at least give a clue.
This will be my final comments about things I learned at Supernova 2008 in June. The prior comments are all in the conference section of patrickWeb. A "People" panel was moderated by BJ Fogg, whom I first met when he presented YackPack at Demo a few years ago. The research shows that people are endlessly creative, that the majority of most people's time is spent offline, and that there are very large differences between the skills people have in using the Internet. There is a correlation between skill level and willingness to share -- the more people know about the Internet the more likely they are to share what they know. Some argued that the skill level is a function of priority given. I am certain of that point. I know many people who could be web savvy if they wanted to be but they would rather play golf or work in the garden. Nothing wrong with that. There is a social technographics ladder that includes people who are inactive, spectators, joiners, collectors, critics, and creators. Some postulated that user background is related to digital media savvy but that it is not an age thing. Another study however showed a very strong correlation between age and these various categories. The study would suggest that at my age I should be technologically inactive! I guess I just don't fit the mold.
Social information discovery is a relatively new term but the phenomenon has been around from the beginnings of the Internet -- you can ask a question and get a lot of people to answer. Sharing today is still done mostly in email which puts high social activation energy on the sender but social networks are changing this. We will share a lot more in the future. Social sites are causing an evolution to the entire web becoming social. User generated content used to be something you go to a site to do like epinions.com or or ticketmaster to find out what people are saying. The problem is that you don't know the people who are making the comments. In the emerging social web you can see what your friends and colleagues think or what they are doing or what the friends of your friends think about restaurant, book, or movie. It is much more relevant.
There are a number of inhibitors to social networks reaching their potential. Our identity is too fragmented -- logins and passwords galore. We have profiles here, there, and everywhere. Applications are incompatible among the various social networks. I am optimistic that this will all come together in a way that meets our security and privacy expectations. The short answer to these concerns is the evolution of standards. OpenID is trying to create a single identification that you can use at any web site. Oauth is an emerging approach for authentication so that you can allow access for a web site to get information about you from another web site but only certain information you have authorized, not all the information. OpenSocial is developing an approach to allow a Facebook application to work at MySpace or any other social network. Google Friend Connect is attempting to bring all three of these together into a social web.
Although I remain optimistic about the concerns, a panel on "Privacy and Security in the Network Age" with
Moderator Andrea Matwyshyn (Wharton), Bruce Schneier (BT Counterpane), Fran Maier (TrustE), Gerard Lewis (Comcast), and Lauren Gelman (Stanford CIS) dug into some of the stark realities. They attempted to answer the question of whether we are entering an era where individuals gain new control over their public personas, and powerful means to leverage reputations or will we be forced to abandon any hope of protecting our privacy and trusting what we encounter online?
Although he claimed to be optimistic, Bruce Schneier, a world renowned expert on privacy, was actually quite gloomy. Everything we do creates a transaction record and the resulting data records have value to others. Storage costs online are now so cheap, nothing gets thrown away. Google, your wireless provider, your healthcare insurance company, etc. all save every piece of data about you and what you do or look for. The trend will accelerate. There are many invasive technologies out there -- surveillance video cameras will be so small in the future that we won't know they are there. Our every movement will be captured. Soon we will be living in a world where no conversation will be private. While some frame the debate as security vs privacy, Bruce framed it as liberty versus control and said that "data is the pollution of the information age". In spite of these pronouncements, the experts are short term pessimistic but long term optimistic. Me too. The government may be watching us but we can watch them too.
The final session I attended was about Broadband Policy. The United States now ranks 15th in the world in terms of availability of broadband to consumers. We had a discussion about what we would do about it if we became policy advisor to the new president. We came up with the following.
A lot of us suggested getting rid of the FCC. It's an ineffective political entity. Other suggestions were to map the gaps where infrastructure and users are and are not, take spectrum policy and flush it, take on universal service and revamp it to focus on broadband instead of pay phones, Un-ban municipal wireless broadband, and benchmark the US against other countries. There are some good things happening such as Verizon's deployment of optical fiber but overall there is not enough competition and there are too many lobbyists seeking protection for large telecommunications companies. When I spoke at the World Wide Web conference in Paris in 1994 the U.S. was the Internet leader. France was skeptical to be kind. Today France is enabling WiFi throughout the country and partnering with utility companies to offer broadband at 100 times the speed of what the U.S. telcos define as broadband. I would like to be more optimistic on this front but I do not know of another industry (telecommunications providers) that have so many lobbyists urging protection and so many customers who are locked into services that they don't like.
There has been no summer slowdown at IBM where July brought a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. The list of announcements made during the month is here. The company announced record second-quarter results with profits up 28 percent on $27 billion in revenue -- roughly $300 million per day! The stellar results came across the board from rom many product, service, software, and geographic areas. The company seems to be firing on all cylinders. SustainableBusiness.com placed IBM on their list of the top twenty sustainable stocks.
Cloud computing will become more and more pervasive in the news over the next few years. So far it has been mostly consumer facing activity such as what Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Apple, and others are doing, but behind the scenes IBM is investing heavily. The clouds that IBM operates are more enterprise, education, and research oriented. The company is
spending hundreds of millions of dollars to create two ultra-sophisticated data
centers that will power the cloud computing model that in turn will enable large institutions to offer their clouds to their customers. Another way to say it is that IBM is creating a cloud of clouds.
IBM is also providing advanced new server hardware to enable others to build clouds. Microsoft is among the first to implement IBM's iDataPlex system, a new category of server that brings supercomputing power to cloud environments. IBM is also going green -- the latest Supercomputing Green 500 List shows that 39 of the top 40 systems ranked on supercomputing energy efficiency
are IBM-based. The company is designing technologies to cut energy use in half by 2010, while increasing computing capacity by a factor of 10.
On the people front, IBM's new Corporate Service Corps program is getting some well deserved headlines. A software-development manager from IBM's Raleigh, North Caroline office spent July in Timisoara, Romania, where he helped a furniture manufacturer become more efficient and more computer-savvy -- offering his expertise for free. With Mr. Chakra in Timisoara were eight IBM colleagues from five countries. Each was assigned to help a different company or non-profit organization, sharing their experience and cultural backgrounds with the local staffs and one another. It is analogous to the Peace Corps. In the short term there is a lot of skills transfer but in the long term IBM gains a foothold in emerging markets and the assignees gain a tremendous breadth of experience which prepares them for key roles as the company continues to grow as a global leader.
I am sticking to my story -- the iPhone 3G is fantastic. There are some issues however. The iPhone is much more than a "cell phone" -- it is a platform. The six basic elements of the platform are the iPhone itself, the network (AT&T in the United States), iTunes, the "App Store", MobileMe and, most importantly, the applications.
Some are saying that since the new iPhone 2.0 software is available for the original iPhone that there is no need to upgrade to the iPhone 3G. It is true that there is no need to but there are a number of good reasons to. The new iPhone uses the new "new AT&T" 3G network which is claimed to be twice as fast -- as something. Speed claims are rarely delivered upon but no doubt that the 3G network is faster. The receiver in the iphone is also better even when communicating with an AT&T non-3G tower. I have noticed at least one bar improvement here at the lake where there is no 3G tower. The WiFi implementation is better too. Not sure if it is the hardware or software that is improved but it is much more reliable and doesn't get confused about whether to use the cellular signal or the WiFi signal. I am getting ahead of myself but one of the neatest new applications is TruPhone. TruPhone allows you to make a phone call from your iPhone via WiFi even if there is *no* tower of any kind. This happens. I was visiting friends in New Hampshire last weekend and we had brunch at a nice place in a remote area. There was no AT&T or roaming partner signal. None. No service. The restaurant, however, had a very nice free WiFi signal. With TruPhone you can make calls to anywhere in the world at a very low price -- pennies per minute. If you are calling another TruPhone user, it is free. I made some calls with it today and the quality was quite good.
There are other reasons to get the new iPhone. It is a bit thinner and more rounded and feels really nice to hold. It is a joy to use. The 3G has a real GPS receiver so when you use maps it is not an estimate of where you are based on cell phone tower triangulations -- it is using satellites to pinpoint exactly where you are. This opens up a slew of "location based" applications -- where is the nearest pizza place? What are the nearest geocaches? How do I get from where I am to wherever? The battery life is claimed to be better but I am not so sure of that. The iPhone has so much more to offer that I think the usage will be higher and maybe effective battery life will actually be less -- that is the case for me so far. Good idea to have a car charger on hand. One of the irritating things about the original iPhone is that you can't plug your favorite headset into it without a special adapter. The new iPhone accepts any headset and does so without any adapter. Bottom line, it is a really great device. There are many iPhone killers out there and more coming but I don't think they will match the overall experience of the Apple iPhone.
The network is another story and I have written about it in not so glowing terms in each iPhone update. I do think they are getting better. As I have always said, it depends on where you live. In the Northeast, Verizon has better coverage but AT&T is putting up new towers -- one just came online two miles from where I live in Connecticut. Naturally, major cities are covered. I also detect that AT&T customer service is really trying hard to satisfy their customers. The overall model of the industry is bad -- limited choice, get locked into two year contracts, and penalties if you want to move to something better.
iTunes continues to dominate online digital music sales but is facing more and more competition. I have been buying my music from Amazon. They have a nice downloader that puts the mp3 music directly into iTunes and there are no digital rights management restrictions. I like this because I can put purchased music on the iTrike. One of the other great applications on the iPhone is Pandora. This has become my music of choice and I play it through the Squeezebox. The Music Genome Project is awesome. If you love music, I highly recommend it.
iTunes is is integrated tightly (as all things Apple are) with the App Store. Both present easy ways to spend your money from your iPhone. I see this as a huge emerging trend. Call it m-Commerce (mobile commerce) if you want. While sitting in the dentist office awaiting your turn you can buy music and applications from your iPhone. An eBay application let's you spend your money -- or monitor your auctions-- there too. On launch day earlier this month there 500+ applications available for the iPhone. There will be many thousands of applications. So far, about 25% of them are free and supported by various flavors of advertising. You click to find the nearest pizza place and Apple gets a slice of the pie. Some are expensive but add huge value. I bought an aviation application for $69.99 that does everything a pilot can imagine. You can file flight plans with the FAA, check weather radar, airport runway lengths, pilot advisories, and much more. I am not a gamer but millions of people are and the iPhone accelerometer allows you to shake or wave the iPhone as inputs to the game. I have to admit that the Phone Saber is fun, albeit a bit geeky -- lets you take on Darth Vader. The impressive part to me is that the applications are stored in the iPhone but also in iTunes. When you sync you are syncing calendar, email, contacts, and the applications. When you click the App Store icon on the phone it tells you if any of your apps have an update available. When you do a search at the iTunes Store, the search results are organized by artists, albums, movies, etc. and applications.
On the flip side, organization is an issue. So far I have 55 applications. I expect to get many more. The human mind is amazing in terms of icon recognition. You just know that the Phone Saber is at the upper left of the fourth page of applications. But at some point it is overwhelming. I expect Apple or perhaps a third party developer will soon introduce an "app launcher" that allows you to tag an application as news, weather, financial, aviation, game, etc. and let you drill down to what you want.
Last, and I hope not least is MobileMe. Apple says it is the "Simple way to keep everything in sync". The vision is great -- your photos, contacts, email, and calendar are all pushed to your iPhone from the "Cloud". You can make a change on the iPhone and it shows up in Outlook or you can make a change in Outlook and it shows up in your iPhone. Those that work for companies that have Microsoft Exchange or IBM's Lotus Notes already have this kind of capability but there are millions of us who are "independent" and have our own mail server or use gmail, or Yahoo! or any of numerous other services. With MobileMe we can be like the "corporate" world but we can set our own policies and practices. We can have Exchange or Notes without Exchange or Notes. The cloud approach is clearly the next big thing (see prior stories on this and also by Irving), but Apple has stubbed their toe big time on this. There are numerous analysts, bloggers, and experts who have ripped them apart about the failings. As previously reported, I struggled with MobileMe the first few days but then it began to work properly for a few days albeit with some hiccups. Beginning this week it is not working properly. Calendar entries get duplicated, synchronization is sluggish or doesn't work at all at times. It is not like Apple to fail big time like this and I am sure they are scrambling to straighten things out.
I got an email from MobileMe@InsideApple.Apple.com the other day asking if I would be interested in a trial of MobileMe! Seems they didn't check their subscriber list first. The MobileMe web site says that "1% of MobileMe members have limited access to MobileMe Mail. Full service will be restored to these accounts on a rolling basis over the next few days". 99% and in a few days were good in the old days but not these days. I decided to try the online chat support to see if they could help resolve my problems. After sending my initial "instant message" I got a reply saying "A MobileMe Support Representative will be with you in approximately 26 minutes. We look forward to answering your questions". I got a reply while I had stepped out of the room for a minute and then had to start over and wait another 26 minutes. After 3 hours and 14 minutes the support rep said he had to escalate the problem to a specialist who would contact me by email. More than two days have gone by and I have had no email from Apple.
This all reminds me of the Fall of 1995 when we were preparing ibm.com to host the Olympic Games of 1996. It turned out to be the largest web site ever built. We had 54 outstanding engineers working on it and it turned out to be successful. Fortunately, we were able to convince the company to make a large investment in the infrastructure. I remember saying that "we don't how many people will come to the web site, we don't know when they will come, nor do we know what they will do when they get there". It was "trial by fire". That was 13 years ago. The lessons learned in 1995 served IBM well and it is now the largest web hosting company in the world. IBM doesn't always call it cloud computing, but they have built the largest clouds on Earth -- in the clouds. Apple has a lot to learn. I am confident they will. Their brand loyalty depends on it.
I learned a lot at Supernova as I do every year. It is difficult to explain the depth and breadth of what transpired at the conference, but hopefully I will hit some highlights and provide links where you can learn more. One of the many interesting topics was "networks" -- something that we take for granted. Three experts talked about the diversity of very large types of networks including baggage routing networks of an airline, electrical grid networks, natural gas distribution, the global aviation system, the Internet, and of course our social networks. The big picture is that social networks are evolving to the point that the entire World Wide Web is likely going to become the Social Web.
A social network is a structure consisting of nodes (people or organizations) that have a common interest or increasingly a dependency. The tie that binds us can be one or more of many things: values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, food likes or dislikes, buy or sell trading, links to each other's blogs, epidemiology, or airline routes. The resulting ontologies are very complex. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families to countries. The use of the networks is beginning to be a key tool in collaboration to solve problems, how people achieve their goals and even how organizations are run.
In its simplest form, a social network is a map of all the relevant ties between the nodes (people). One of the first social networks was Linkedin and I have been a member of it from nearly the beginning. Hardly a day goes by when I don't get several invitations to become a "friend" or "colleague" with another Linkedin member (or Plaxo Pulse or Facebook). To gain the real "network effect" I recommend being selective in dealing with these invitations. Otherwise you end up connected to everybody which is as valuable as being connected to nobody. There are many people who are looking for people to send press releases to or to throw you into a recruitment pool or just be able to say they "know" someone or is their "friend" because they saw your name in the paper or saw you at a conference. The real power is not in the numbers per se but to really know someone who knows someone who knows someone and to have the credibility with the person you know such that they are willing to help you to connect to someone else. I have 178 trusted friends and colleagues in my Linkedin network. Two degrees away -- friends of friends; each connected to one of my connections -- there are more than 60,000 people. Three degrees away -- members who can be reached through a friend and one of their friends -- is 3,200,000 people. If you are discerning about it you can develop considerable social capital.
There are many issues in the social networking space. One of them is that there are so many networks. If you take a look at the end of this story you will see
-- and if you like the story and click on the green icon, a dialogue box offers you three functions. You can send an email link to the story to friends. A second choice is that you can post the story to your own blog. Perhaps most important is the third choice which is to post the story at one or more of your favorite social networks. The dialogue box displays icons for the various social networks -- Facebook and thirty-nine other of the top forty networks! A few mouse clicks and you have the ultimate chain letter. I think ShareThis has great potential.
How many social networks should you belong to? Certainly not forty. I belong to Linkedin, Plaxo Pulse, Facebook, and MySpace. Four is enough for me. But is it? There are many niche networks -- such as A Small World -- that will be of interest to m any. But do you want to create a profile of your personal information at each of the networks you choose? And keep them up to date? And tell your connected friends what you are doing and exactly where you are (latitude and longitude) and what music you like or even what song you are listening to at the moment? To me the glass is half full. I am hopeful that protocols will emerge such as OAuth, OpenID, and OpenSocial that will level the playing field. We will be able to use one single "sign-on" for all our web sites and create *one* profile and have control over which networks and which parts of the profile it appear in. For example, it would be nice to create a comprehensive profile that is encrypted and totally under the user's control. You may choose to have your favorite songs be accessible through Facebook but not your medical records from Google Health and your Google Health electronic medical record to be accessible to your primary care physician and your hospital but nobody else. The application you create for your consulting business or a new game you created could be available through *all* the social networks.
Social networking is the next turn of the crank of the Internet. By combining networks, such as a mobile phone networks, mobile payment systems, the Internet and a network of people all sharing a common cause, a viral effect can take place resulting in a lot of money or assistance flowing to the need -- political, emergency response or (hopefully) humanitarian.
Security and privacy issues with social networking? Another story to come soon.
It is now more than 84 hours since I got my hands on the iPhone 3g. The bottom line is that the phone itself is a masterpiece -- really great. As expected, there are many applications available in the "app store" and many thousands more to come. That is the good news. The bad news is that apple.com is failing big time.
The activation and iTunes problems are well documented in the media but I am surprised that there is not more coverage of the MobileMe issues. MobileMe is a key part of Apple's strategy. It is basically a "cloud computing" offering that enables you to put all your email, contacts, calendar items, and data files at me.com which is Apple's name for their cloud. Once in the cloud, you can then synchronize everything with Outlook. If you make a change in Outlook it goes to the cloud and then down to your iPhone. If you make a change on your iPhone it goes up to the cloud and down to Outlook. If you go to a kiosk at the airport or use a computer at a friend's house and make a change, both your iPhone and Outlook are updated automatically.
I took the bait -- hook, line, and sinker. After installing the MobileMe software on both my iPhone and PC, I synchronized with iTunes. This resulted in all my contacts and calendar items being removed from the iPhone -- they would now be replaced by an update from the cloud. One big assumption -- the cloud (Apple servers) has to be working -- and it wasn't. This is the problem I anticipated in the last post. Apple does not have their act together in maintaining their cloud. I called support today and they said "MobileMe is not working -- all the servers are down". Not good. The great thing about clouds is that you do not have to worry about Windows, your varivous PC issues, etc., but the bad news is that you become totally dependent on the cloud provider -- in this case, Apple -- and they are not a proven player. At this point, all my data is in the cloud and none of it is on my iPhone.
This all reminds me of the Fall of 1995 when we were preparing ibm.com to host the Olympic Games of 1996. It turned out to be the largest web site ever built. We had 54 outstanding engineers working on it and it turned out to be successful. Fortunately, we were able to convince the company to make a large investment in the infrastructure. I remember saying that "we don't how many people will come to the web site, we don't know when they will come, nor do we know what they will do when they get there". Dave Grossman, of our team, called it "trial by fire". That was 13 years ago. The lessons learned in 1995 served IBM well and it is now the largest web hosting company in the world. Apple has a lot to learn.
Kevin Werbach kicked off the conference with his view of the "Ten Challenges for the Network Age". If it wasn't already, Supernova made it clear that decentralization is happening and that there is an accelerating shift underway to network-based computing, services, business processes, marketing, entertainment, social relationships, connectivity, and culture. The shift is changing our assumptions about how the world works. There are big opportunities ahead for those who grasp the shift and peril ahead for those who don't.
A panel with Bob Iannucci from Nokia,
Esther Dyson, and Clay Shirky (New York University) how the Internet is changing the way the world works -- especially how people are doing things differently. In Clay's new book "Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, he tells a story of how a woman left her cell phone in a cab and someone stole it and started using it rather than trying to find out who owned it (which would have been easy). The woman's friend took the matter as "wrong" and launched a campaign on the Internet through blogs and social networks to get the thief to return the phone. Based on messages the person had sent from the phone it was determined who she was. Her MySpace profile led to where she lives. The police would not take the case. They said it was just lost, not stolen. The bloggers did not give up and eventually brought the NYPD around. The phone got back to the owner and the thief was arrested. More than one million people followed and/or participated in the effort. Talk about "Power to the People"! (which I have been writing about for fifteen years). ! highly recommend Clay's book.
In a similar manner, Facebook groups are providing valuable input to businesses and surely will cause them to change direction on some issues. Intel found this out years ago when they denied problems with the then new Pentium chip. They were forced to come clean. Collective opinions will be making more and more of a difference. Another emerging business tool is the the Virtual Company Project which is building online tools to provide governance for a virtual company. People with common interests and appropriate skills will be able to develop a business and collaborate online to provide products and services.
On the political scene the bloggers of America have been having a heyday for the last five years and are becoming more and more effective. In 1999 there was considerable strife in Kosovo. Part of the strategy by the government was to control information so that the people would not know exactly what was going on. Journalists were expelled from the country. The independent radio station, B92, in Belgrade was closed down. Local media was either shut down or censored. But the radio station set up a web site and began to publish text, audio and video. They reported when air raid sirens were going off. Up to the minute news was provided to the population. There was no way to shut down the Internet site because the government didn't’t know where the server was. If they had known and shut it down another server would have been put back online. From a coup in Thailand to London bombings, information becomes available and it becomes public. In Zimbabwe text messages went out to tell people where to vote as the government tried to keep it a secret. Governments can put people in jail but they will not be able to confiscate 3-5 billion cell phones. As long as there is information the Internet provides a way to share it. Power to the People.
One of the most subtle but most powerful capabilities of today's Web 2.0 that was not available ten years ago is tagging. People take pictures with their phone and upload them to Flickr. They then apply tags: London, bombing. Someone else finds the pcitures and adds their own tags: train, terrorism. As more people find, view, and tag, the pictures become more valuable -- they gain more context. This is a key element of social networking. Not only can people report something, but they can also join in a collaborative effort to find a criminal or a loved one. Awesome stuff and we have only seen the tip of the iceberg.
The month started out with the Business Partner Leadership Conference in Los Angeles and then was filled with a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. The list of announcements made during the month is here. One of the most interesting things IBM did in May was to release a Global CEO Study. Being the largest information technology solutions provider in the world, it is imperative for IBM to have a keen understanding of the priorities of the top management of it's clients. The idea is to stay ahead of the curve and have the skills and resources in place to meet upcoming demand. IBM sent senior people to interview 1,130 CEO's from 40 countries to capture insights on how the challenges CEO's face today will impact the future of business.
It was the largest study of chief executives ever conducted -- spanning 32 industries. This was not SurveyMonkey -- it was face-to-face interviews. The study revealed that 83 percent of CEO's expect substantial change in the future, and are optimistic they can successfully manage change. The catch is that the CEO's report that their ability to effectively manage change is increasing at a far slower pace. The gap between the rate of change and the skills available is growing. This is bad news in some respects, but certainly good news for IBM which increasingly gains it's revenue and profits by filling skill gaps for clients.
A somewhat surprising insight from the study is that CEO's believe that the most important changes are occurring within their existing customer base. Two kinds of customers are emerging. First is the ‘information omnivore’ who craves knowing everything about everything and spends a good portion of their time (maybe most of their time) online. The other customer is the ‘socially-minded’ customer. This type of person can't get enough of providing and retrieving information about where they are, where their friends are, what they are doing, what their favorite things are, and arranging a rendezvous in both virtual and real world places. The CEO's plan substantial increases in investments to reach both of these customer types. This spells opportunity for IBM. Take a look at a video clip with more insight about the CEO Study.
Speaking of CEO's, two of the technology industry's finest got together on stage at the Business Partner Leadership Conference in Los Angeles. Eric Schmidt of Google and Sam Palmisano of IBM have more in common than you might think. Eric cut his teeth on IBM's largest scientific computers and has been a devotee of advanced computing architecture throughout his career. Sam has a conviction about the role of information omnivores and social computing. The common ground is cloud computing. The two companies announced an initiative to promote new software development methods which will help students and researchers address the challenges of Internet-scale applications in the future. The goal is to improve computer science students’ knowledge of highly parallel computing practices. IBM and Google are teaming up to provide hardware, software and services to augment university curricula and expand research horizons. The University of Washington was the first to join the initiative but the program is spreading to other leading schools around the world. The project combines IBM’s historic strengths in scientific, business and secure-transaction computing with Google’s complementary expertise in Web computing and massively scaled clusters. It seems very likely that the IBM-Google collaboration will change the way large-scale computing is exploited over the years ahead. Here is a video clip of what Eric Schmidt had to say at the Los Angeles meeting.
The final speaker at IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference in Los Angeles was Nick Donofrio, the company's Executive Vice President for Innovation and Technology. Always an emotional, enthusiastic and at times nostalgic speaker, little did the audience know that the next day IBM would announce that Nick will be retiring on October 1 after a fantastic career of forty-four years. I have no doubts that he will end up involved in many activities and will find that he may need to go back to work to regain some spare time.
One of Nick's many leadership roles at IBM has been with the Global Innovation Outlook program. One of the recent GIO events brought together a diverse group of global thought leaders for a series of brainstorming sessions about the future of innovation and economic advancement in Africa. One of the greatest needs identified was to provide access to capital and financing to more of the African population. It was clear that there could be significant growth and transformation if there was a more open, scalable, lower-cost microfinance hub serving the African continent.
IBM and CARE have announced plans to enable microfinance institutions to dramatically lower the costs of providing financial services to large populations in the region who have no access to banks. The goal of the new Africa Financial Grid is to help alleviate poverty and promote economic development in the Sub-Saharan Region. The two organizations plan to establish an Africa Financial Grid built around a shared services and infrastructure model designed to significantly reduce operating costs, streamline lending processes, scale rapidly, and integrate with other resources such as credit bureaus, financial institutions and international payment networks. The Grid will also eventually be able to link with mobile payment providers in Africa to enable customers to repay loans or transfer money via mobile phones. The project will initially target 11 countries with a combined population of more than 400 million people.
There are millions of people with business ideas and aptitudes but with incomes of less than $100 per month, it has been impossible to get financing. A small loan can make a big difference. For example, a loan of $50 enabled a mother of six to purchase fabric and sell embroidered products. Based on her success she was able to get subsequent loans and expand her business. Very small loans can have a big impact but it has been too costly for financial institutions to make the loans practical. The combination of technology and expertise that IBM and CARE bring to the table has the potential to change the model and have a huge impact. One more example of how the Internet continues to empower people.
The flight to Los Angeles last week was long but on schedule and it provided some time to make a dent in reading World Without End (sequel to The Pillars of the Earth) by Ken Follett on the Kindle. Holding the 10-once e-reader is a joy and the battery lasted throughout the six hour flight. The physical book -- 1,024 pages -- would not be a joy to hold for hours.
The purpose of the trip was to attend IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference. The event was attended by roughly 1,000 business partners, IBM executives, members of the press, and information technology analysts. See "IBM Happenings - May 2008" for a list of some of the announcements made by IBM during the meeting. At the end of the first day was a special event at the University of California School of Cinematic Arts. The invitation only event included 100 or so analysts, members of the press, faculty members and students. IBM and USC had been holding discussions to map out a collaboration between some of the most creative minds in Hollywood with some of IBM's top scientists. Having known some of them for years I was really pleased with they selected. The moderator was Dr. Bill Pulleyblank, mathematician, computer scientist and predictive analysis expert. Bill is known for having managed a project in which a supercomputer named Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in a six game rematch. The panelists were
all quite distinguished. Don Eigler, IBM Fellow, was the first ever to precisely manipulate individual atoms and spelling the word "I B M". Jeff Jonas, IBM Distinguished Engineer, expert in security and privacy, created much of the technology used in capturing criminals in Vegas casinos. Sharon Nunes, Head of the Energy and Environment business at IBM is a research expert in materials science and is working on numerous projects to save the environment. Last but not least was Ajay Royyuru, who leads IBM Research's computational biology team and IBM's liaison to the National Geographic Genographic project. Ajay participated on a past panel which I had the honor to moderate at Demo.
The breadth and depth of the panel could have kept the audience spellbound for quite a few hours. Will the future be like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Back to the Future, Incredible Journey or Star Wars? How can scientists help filmmakers create prescient depictions of the future?
Much of the discussion revolved around the merger of biology and systems. Some of the breakthroughs discussed included using nanotechnology to assure the availability of clean drinking water everywhere on the planet, self-healing spinal cords, and life span stretching well past the century mark? The human genome has been mapped but that is just the beginning. In effect the mapping provides the parts list of the human bodies. The next phase of research is to figure out what all those parts do and how they fit together. Not only will regenerating entire body parts be possible but embedded processors under our skin will make it possible to gain significant human augmentation of our capabilities. A project in Europe called Blue Brain is using IBM supercomputing technology to built a simulation model of the human brain. This is a very big undertaking but someday it could lead to curing some of the most dreaded diseases that afflict our societies.
Computer processing is already awesome but we haven't seen anything yet. A Mini Cooper has more computing power than Apollo 13 had. At the exponential pace of growth of computing capacity we may actually reach the Singularity in the next couple of decades.
Security and privacy are obviously crucial elements to the research agenda.
We will be able to have an embedded super-PDA that can record every conversation you hear or say during a lifetime. Existing databases make it possible to specifically identify a person by only knowing their zip date of birth and gender. So much for witness protection programs. The good news is that ubiquitous sensors can make the world is less dangerous place. Yes, the government can watch the people, but the people can watch the government too.
I think we are very fortunate that IBM focuses vast sums of money and thousands of top notch people on solving some of the tougher global problems. There is money in some of it and long term business value is created but along the way societies around the world benefit greatly from IBM's work toward the greater good. Take a look at the most recent report on this to get an idea.
As for film making, I learned a lot in talking with some graduate students at the reception. They are all hoping to be as successful as Steven Spielberg, and no doubt some will. The surprising thing I learned is that the best quality movies are still captured on cellulose acetate based film. It is rare these days to see a professional photographer use anything other than a digital camera and apparently with wide angle, high contrast movie making, the industry is not quite there. Consensus was that it would be all digital within five years. Computers already play a huge role (no pun intended) in film making either for augmentation of scenes or for creating the very characters of the movie.
I have to admit that I am not surprised that the Microsoft - Yahoo! deal fell through -- in fact I thought it would. It is not the issue $33 per share or $37 per share. The issue is a mismatch in culture. I remember when Jerry Yang and David Filo, both Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, received an award at Internet World in 1994. They had converted their student hobby into a business that went on to have a major impact on the growth of the Internet.
"Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" became Yahoo! -- an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle" but Filo and Yang also claim they also selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." The Yahoo! web site ran on Yang's student workstation, "Akebono," and Filo's computer, "Konishiki" - both named after legendary sumo wrestlers. I don't know for certain but I would bet anything these were both Unix systems. I also suspect that most of their development since the early days has been with Unix or Linux and certainly a lot of open source software in conjunction with the proprietary innovations they have created.
Microsoft has a lot of money and a lot of really smart people but the culture is different. Seems reasonable to assume that MSN was built on Microsoft's software -- if not then that is another story. MSN and Hotmail do not have the best reputation -- at least with those close to the Internet. Some would say Microsoft had sought to subsume the Internet in the early days while Yahoo has consistently embraced the Internet from day one. Microsoft has the reputation for being a place where workers toil individually while Yahoo has been is a Silicon Valley archetype where employees tend to work collaboratively.
The bottom line is that Microsoft and Yahoo! are both successful in their own ways but arguably they are oil and water. Merging them might make sense to the financial analysts but it makes no sense to many observers. If they were to come together financially it would take a decade to fully integrate the two to gain the benefits that would be expected. It may not be possible.
One thing is for sure. The beneficiaries of the failed merger will be the lawyers who will take many millions of dollars from both company's shareholders to sue and defend the failure to buy or sell.
A reader of the story about the hospital SmartCard project asked me if the card could store an MRI. The short answer is no, not today, but in the long term, yes for sure. The most important short-term role for the smartcard is authentication. The best example to explain that is Clear. The Clear smartcard contains a digital representation of each iris, all ten finger prints, and your photograph. When you present your Clear smartcard at the airport, there is no doubt that you are who you say you are. You then "fly through airport security" to your destination. Imagine the same at the hospital -- no more clipboards and filling out information they already have. It seems like a dream today but in the not too distant future we will be able to "fly" through the healthcare process, experience personalized medicine, and feel like the providers are giving us concierge treatment.
Back to the MRI question, where are the MRI's -- and CAT scans, X-Rays, and mammogram's -- stored? They used to be on film and the patient would carry them around from specialist to specialist and the hospital would keep football field size storage rooms loaded with them. Progressive hospitals today use a PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System). The performance and reliability of PACS are critical to a hospital's ability to provide patient care. The PACSs have gotten better and better but physicians are continuously raising the bar. Understandably, CIO's and CFO's are concerned about the fast growth of storage needed as the imaging technology supports higher resolutions, more images per study, and escalating federal and state government storage requirements. Physicians want online access 24x7 from the office, hospital or their home to not only the MRI you had today but the one you had a year ago and maybe ten years ago. Hospitals have tried to cope with the increased demand by offering online storage for very current images and "nearline" storage for those that have been archived. Nearline often means that the image is stored on tape and can be brought online if a special request is made. Increasingly physicians and patients do not feel there is anything "special" about it -- they expect all data to be online all the time just like Amazon. The online retailer has every order they have ever received since the company started in 1995 online and available 24x7. Easy for them some might say. An order for a book is trivial compared to a digital MRI image.
How big is a digital MRI image? A recent cervical spine MRI contained 160 images and was approximately 60 megabytes in size. About the same as 200 iPhone pictures or 20 iTunes songs. Let's suppose a community hospital has 25,000 patient visits per year and that on average a patient has two image studies performed. That would be 50,000 times 60 megabytes which equals 3 terabytes. Now let's consider what size storage is available and how much it costs.
In the mid 1970's an IBM "disk pack" for a mainframe computer had a capacity of 200 megabytes -- about three MRI's. The entire storage system could contain eight "drives" for a total of 1.6 gigabytes. It seemed like a lot at the time. The cost of the disk drive that the disk pack fit on was nearly $200,000. During the last thirty years the cost has continuously plummeted while the capacity has skyrocketed. The Apple Time Capsule has a capacity of one terabyte and costs $499. IBM has a new storage system that offers up to 1,176 terabytes in a single system. Soon we will be talking about petabytes (1,000 terabytes) and then exabytes, zettabytes, and yottabytes. When I had written a story about yottabytes back in 2005 a reader said the term should be "alottabytes". A yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.
The bottom line is that there will be plenty of storage to put all our images online. The key challenge is the management of the data -- keeping it secure, backed up, resilient to disaster, and easy to access and manipulate. Many providers will decide to put all the data in the "cloud" and let someone else manage it. Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) is the tip of the iceberg. They charge
$0.15 per gigabyte per month of storage used. IBM offers a wide range of storage services and also partners with many healthcare information technology companies.
The normal reaction would be that having all the images online is too expensive. I think many of us will instead think of it like electricity. Healthcare providers use a lot of electricity and some are beginning to cogenerate their own to save money. One thing they don't do however is consider having some of their electricity "offline" or "nearline". It is online 24x7. That is the way we will soon think of medical images.
The conference in Las Vegas this past week was not like the ones Thomas J. Watson used to hold in Endicott where all the blue suit white shirt male attendees would sing songs about IBM's future. The master of ceremonies for the opening morning was Drew Carey and the "dinner music" was by The B-52's -- the new waverock band not the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. I don't think anyone wore a blue suit or a white shirt.
What attracted the 6,300 people to fly to Las Vegas and fill every hall, ballroom, salon, patio, and restaurant at the MGM Grand? IBM calls it "Smart SOA". I call it The Application Web.
Only the most brilliant technical people could come up with SOA as a name for something. Let's see, is it safe operating area,
School of the Americas, Skies of Arcadia (a Nintendo game), Society of Actuaries, state of the art, or the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act? Nope. The SOA that brought all these people together stands for "service oriented architecture". It is really important. The wikipedia has a comprehensive definition of SOA but basically it represents a new way for companies -- and hospitals, schools, and governments -- to enable their customers -- and suppliers, business partners, and employees -- to get things done on the web. Actually it is isn't new -- the idea has been around for decades -- but now it is really happening. It is so much a part of the vernacular at IBM that they just matter of factly talk about "so a".
In a nutshell, SOA will allow web sites to do much more than “click here to buy”. In fact web sites built with SOA will result in us standing in fewer lines in the physical world and have to endure fewer telephone call centers that want to control us. Fulfillment models at our favorite retailer’s web site will result in the staple goods we need just showing up outside the garage door when we need them. If businesses have the right attitude, SOA will enable them to get closer to the ultimate Internet -- to build a people-oriented and user-friendly experience that is tightly integrated with all the appropriate business processes of the company.
Over the last fifty years there has been an explosion of computer applications, but many of them were built in silos and were highly inflexible. In some cases companies thought decentralization was the answer so they allowed divisions and departments to do their own thing. The result was that many have a hodgepodge of incompatible systems that nobody is happy with. The web took things a big leap forward. At last there was a common way (the browser) for accessing and displaying information, even though the applications that run on the server -- that do the pricing, inventory lookups, shipping estimates, invoicing, etc. -- are still proprietary and usually tied to one particular IT vendor or system. The applications have also been very monolithic; i.e. in order to fulfill the expectations of customers on the web the application has to do the whole job. Soup to nuts; present the right price, confirm if the item is in stock, calculate shipping, and confirm the status of the order. Increasingly, customers want to get access directly into the supply chain and see exactly where their order stands. In short, applications have gotten larger and more complicated -- harder, not easier.
SOA -- arguably the biggest change in information technology in decades -- is poised to change the way applications are created and how they interoperate. Instead of building a monolithic application that takes a customer order, does credit checks, checks inventory, looks through the supply chain, arranges for payment, charges the customer, clears credit card transactions, etc., with SOA these various functions are built as separate "pieces". Think Legos. The individual programs are called "services" and they are called upon as needed. A sales tax calculation "service", for example, could be used by many different divisions of a company thereby eliminating redundancy. IBM has been practicing what it preaches in this regard. It has reduced the number of programs it uses to run the company from 16,000 to just a few thousand -- and declining.
The SOA services do not all have to be developed or acquired internally. Thanks to the Internet, services can be "rented" from others. For example, suppose that a company called American Specialties Inc. (ASI) specializes in selling American goods for delivery mostly outside of America. They want to create an application to sell their products on the web. The trickiest part of the application is determining the best way to ship the product to ensure it gets there when the customer wants it and at the lowest cost. ASI doesn't’t have the skills to write this particular part of the application and they haven’t bee able to find a vendor with a software package that can do it and which is compatible with the rest of ASI’s software.
It turns out that there is another company called Rates and Costs Inc. (RCI), which specializes in the calculation of optimum routes and the associated costs for shipment to places anywhere in the world. RCI offers the calculation as a service on the web and it is the exact function ASI needs to incorporate into their web application. Since RCI follows the SOA standards, ASI is able to see the specifications for RCI’s service – what inputs are required and what output does it produce. RCI could have created their calculation service using any IT platform they choose -- the standards assure that things can work together.
The programmer at ASI likes RCI’s program because it performs exactly the right function that ASI needs and the software has already been written and tested! ASI follows the SOA standards to incorporate RCI’s service into their web application. Whenever a user goes to ASI’s web page and needs shipment route and cost information, a link is made behind the scenes to RCI’s web server to get the information. ASI’s customers don’t know, nor will they care, that part of the job is being done by RCI’s server; not ASI’s server. ASI makes an arrangement to pay RCI each time one of ASI’s customers uses the RCI web service.
Creating programs by linking to other programs without regard to what programming language was used to create the others’ programs represents a whole new paradigm. It is one of the information technology industry’s holy grails. Standards organizations, such as Oasis, have been attempting for years to create a “neutral” programming environment. The UNIX vendors – HP, DEC, Sun, IBM, Data General, and others – formed various organizations, councils and consortia over the years attempting to bring things together. Progress was made but none of these initiatives achieved real openness and true compatibility across the information technology industry -- until SOA. It is not really new but it is time. Open Internet standards and SOA tools are making it happen.
SOA will make it possible for the web to evolve from a web of content to a web of content and applications. SOA will enable server-to-server interaction in addition to browser to server interactions. Servers will negotiate with other servers and even complete transactions by themselves with no direct human intervention. These interactions will replace the paper forms and faxes that flow back and forth from company to company today.
E-business evolved to on demand and on demand has evolved to business and IT "alignment". At this stage many enterprises have bought in to the concept but are struggling with how to get there. This is why many web sites don't fully meet our needs -- they are dependent on many independent applications that the enterprise has had for decades and so far have been unable to integrate them. SOA is the new model -- it offers the first comprehensive, standards based way to get the job done. Adoption of SOA will enable the interoperability within the many functions and departments of enterprises and between enterprises that has been a decades long dream. History has shown that adoption of standards leads to an explosion of usage and that will surely be the case with SOA. The SOA standards will enable entire industries to be brought together. Virtual corporations comprised of a federation of smaller ones will enable “hyper competition” on a global scale.
How does "Web 2.0" fit into all this? Like a ball and glove. Quite the hot topic in tech circles and among venture capitalists, Web 2.0 is basically a style, a model, an approach, and a philosophy wrapped together. It includes a "lightweight" programming model that is more like web page development than traditional programming. A key element of 2.0 is the blog feed -- a way to allow people to look at a web page but also subscribe to it. Another element is AJAX, a technique built on a collection of Internet standards that produces a rich user experience -- kayak.com is a good example -- with pages that don't "reload", they just change while you are looking at them. Another characteristic of Web 2.0 is that it is a perpetual beta -- users are treated as co-developers. At the conference, IBM announced WebSphere sMash which may turn out to be a really key tool for the evolution toward Web 3.0. Jerry Cuomo, IBM Fellow and CTO for IBM WebSphere, described a broad vision for how "smashups" will extend the web in a major way. The idea is to make it simple to combine content from multiple web sites. For example a travel agency may want to combine the best deals from airlines and hotels along with comments and discussion from tourists all in one "seamless" site. The smashup tool is based on a community project called "Project Zero" that has been underway for a number of months and is now ready to go mainstream.
All things considered, IBM really has it's act together with regard to SOA. Every software and services executive at the company is well versed on it and has it baked into their business and development plans. The promise is great and with tens of thousands of software engineers and top management support I think it is fair to expect IBM to continue to deliver on their vision. They have already made dozens of acquisitions to fill in the white spaces and customers are signing up and getting results. There were hundreds of customers and business partners there in Las Vegas to tell their success stories. Nothing is more creditable than having someone else tell your story for you.
Conferences, IBM, Internet Technology, On Demand, Travels, e-Business April 15, 2008 08:25 PM
Thursday, March 6, 2008
South Africa 2008 - Infrastructure
We met Matimba Mbungela at Moyo's for dinner. It was pleasantly warm at the table outside. It was the first time I had my face painted and the first time I had eaten oxtail. At the end of the evening there was another first. Matimba insisted on picking up the tab. The server came to the table with a wireless credit card reader. After the card was swiped, Matimba's mobile phone received an SMS text message. South Africa has embraced mobile as a key part of their banking infrastructure. After every credit card charge your cell phone receives a message confirming the charge. In fact any debit or credit to your bank account or credit card results in an SMS message. Not everyone in South Africa has an Internet connection but tens of millions have a mobile phone. The security is good because most people don't share their phone. SMS has enormous potential for applications of all kinds. The New York Times, Fox News, and others are using SMS for news and election alerts but when it comes to SMS for data oriented applications, South Africa is well ahead of the United States.
Other aspects of infrastructure in South Africa were a mixed bag. Broadband Internet access was available everywhere we visited including the MalaMalabushveld (via satellite). Even Zimbabwe had dial-up access in an Internet lounge. It was $4 for 15 minutes if you paid cash, or $8 if you put it on your hotel bill. According to the Internet World Stats, just over 10% of the population of South Africa had Internet access as of 2006. I suspect the number is much higher now, especially if you consider Internet Cafes. We saw many of these throughout Soweto. iBurst, one of South Africa's largest wireless broadband providers, is planning to roll out 20 000 Internet cafes by 2010.
Availability of electricity in Africa is a challenge -- even in major cities in South Africa. When we checked into our hotel in Johannesburg, there was a letter under the door from the hotel general manager saying that if elevators stopped working, the emergency power generator should kick in within eight minutes. There are rolling power outages throughout the country. People say it is due to poor planning by the government. Rolling blackouts are annoying but the bigger problem is total lack of electricity in many parts of Africa. Without electricity it is hard to move water. Without water it is hard to build an economy and grow food. The big potential is solar, as Africa is very well positioned geographically. The UN and non-profits such as SELF are trying to break down economic and governmental barriers to exploiting solar's potential.
Finally is mobile communications. I took my iPhone because that is where all my calendar and contact details are, but when it comes to phone calls and the mobile Internet, the Apple - AT&T team does not make it easy. Apple locks the iPhone so you can not put a Vodacom South Africa SIM card in it -- Apple wants to be sure to get their commission from AT&T. In South Africa, AT&T charges $2.49 per minute for inbound or outbound calls, fifty cents for a text message, and $20 per megabyte for data service. (Some modest discounts are available if you sign up for a monthly international plan). Some unwary travelers have forgotten to turn off automatic email retrieval in their iPhone and ended up with thousands of dollars in charges from AT&T.
Maxroam is an innovative VoIP company in Ireland. For a little more than $40 they send you a SIM card which you can put into any unlocked GSM phone -- such as the Treo which I held onto after getting the iPhone for use during international travel. Maxroam gives you a U.S. mobile phone number. If someone calls my iPhone while I am out of the country it will automatically forward to the Treo. If I want to make a call I dial from the Treo using whatever local GSM operator is available. The cost for Maxroam varies by country -- in South Africa it is 39 cents per minute for inbound calls and 49 cents per minute for local or outbound calls. The Maxroam proposition was very appealing but unfortunately it did not work. I called and emailed the company with no response. If not Maxroam, someone will figure out how to use VoIP to get around the outrageous international mobile roaming rates. Fortunately, I was able to get a Vodacom prepaid card for the Treo. It worked very well for local and international calls. Most international calls were made from the hotel room with my ThinkPad using Skype at two cents per minute.
The South African Airways flight to Dakar, Senegal on the northwest coast of Africa was approximately 4.000 miles and took about seven and a half hours. It was the half-way point on the journey to Johannesburg. From door to door it took just about 24 hours to get to the D'Oreale Grande at Emperors Palace at Kempton Park in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. South Africa borders the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Visiting this beautiful country is quite a geography lesson.
On the arrival night, it was a pleasure to meet Matimba Mbungela, a managing executive at Vodacom South Africa, in person after having exchanged email and phone calls during the prior week. Matimba introduced me to his colleague Chris Ross, the senior sales executive for Vodacom South Africa, who would be host of the conference taking place the next day. Vodacom is a Pan-African cellular communications company providing world class GSM services to more than 30 million customers in South Africa, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique. More than 500 Vodacom business partners attended The Future of Technology conference to get an update on the various Vodacom offerings. My keynote at the end of the day offered a view of The Future of the Internet. That evening a delightful gala was held to recognize the sales achievements of the top Vodacom partners and dealers.
Like most conferences, there was an exhibition area where dozens of hardware, software, and services companies showed off their latest offerings. One of the most interesting one was the Firefly, from Grapevine Interactive. The Firefly is a parent-friendly mobile phone for young children. The tiny colorful phone has three prominent buttons on it. One to call Mom, one to call Dad, and one to place an emergency call. The phone can also store twenty parent-approved phone numbers.
Another conference took place later in the week in Midrand at Vodaworld, the company headquarters. The top 200 senior level executives of Vodacom came together as part of their professional development and to network with one another. The first part of the morning focused on The Future of the Internet and the second half we discussed innovation and how to nurture big ideas. The latter session was based on a class I led at MIT in September.
During the second half of the first week we stayed at the Intercontinental in Sandton, just a few blocks from Nelson Mandela Square. The giant statue of the former President of South Africa is impressive as is the life of the man who was first to be elected in a fully representative democratic election in the country. Mandela had led the anti-apartheid movement. We could see Robben Island, where Mandela spent 27 years in prison, from the waterfront the following week in Cape Town. We also visited his former home in Soweto. The respect for Nelson Mandela is universal regardless of ethnicity or political leaning. He will be 90 in July.
Nearby in Soweto is Orlando West stands the Hector Pieterson memorial square. Pieterson was killed at the age of twelve when police opened fire on protesting students in 1976. More than five-hundred were killed in the struggle. Soweto, which stands for townships southwest of Johannesburg, consists of dozens of townships and represents more than a third of the population of the city. The poverty is incredible. Some progress is being made but the results of decades of repression are obvious. The sights are breathtaking and not in a positive way. Hard to imagine that a government rationalized the extreme segmentation and discrimination. After a half day touring Soweto we had lunch in the Dube section of Soweto at Wandies Place. I could not identify most of the food in the buffet but it was very tasty.
Another half-day educational visit was to the Cradle of Humankind. It was well worth the one hour ride north of Johannesburg into the Gauteng province to see the Sterkfontein Caves where the 2.3-million year-old fossil Australopithecus africanus (nicknamed "Mrs. Ples"), an early hominid, was found in 1947. We literally had to crawl on hands and knees to get to the bottom of the enormous limestone cave hundreds of feet below ground. Although there was not much light, we could see huge stalactites and stalagmites and an underground lake that is fed from more than fifty miles away. Excavation at the site continues. In case you did not know it, we all came from Africa. The guide said "welcome back". If you are interested in finding the path taken by your ancestors to get from Africa to whatever part of the world you live in, take a look at the human genographic project.
There is much to write about Africa and Internet technology, but I can not resist sharing about our luggage. We waited in line along with many others to provide information about the size and color of the missing bags. The agent entered the information and gave us a printout that was clearly from a decades-old system. We were told to give a call after twenty-four hours. I called after 26 hours and was told there was no update and that it could take up to five days. The reasoning was that there may not be room in the next few flights for "extra" baggage -- the classic case of taking care of the new customers rather than upset them by helping customers who have already been disappointed. After continuing to get "there is no new information" I thought to myself that tracking luggage would be a great application for the web. I wondered if the airline had thought about it.
I visited South African Airways (flysaa.com) and at the bottom of the "After your trip" page was a link for "Lost/damaged luggage". Could it be? II entered the file reference number from the printout and voila! Information about each of the four bags was displayed along with the status. As the day went on the status changed from "No information available" to "Arrived at airport" to "Delivery process underway". It took thirty-six hours to get the luggage but I was impressed with how South African Airways had integrated a very old application with a user-friendly web front end. Apparently the people at the airport are not aware of it. The airline could certainly take some anxiety away and offload an extremely busy call center by informing their customers about the web application and including the url on the printout. The ideal solution would be to have the application automatically generate an SMS text message to your mobile phone every hour with the status.
The pictures are uploaded to the gallery and the stories will start soon.
There are quite a few stories here in the blog about "Long Distance". What is long distance? When the grandkids come from the Philadelphia area to Connecticut to visit, they consider that a long distance. When visiting Singapore or New Zealand or other parts of Southeastern Asia, you know you are a long way from New York -- like 10,000 miles or so. When we head to Johannesburg, South Africa from JFK tomorrow, that will be a long distance (approximately 8,000 miles).
When it comes to a "telephone" conversation, the words "long distance" don't really mean anything. Many of us remember the phone ringing decades ago at grandma's house at holiday time and the room immediately being urged to "shhhhhh" because the call was "long distance". Hurry, we would say as we waited our turn for a few seconds to say hello to the caller. Long distance was considered a luxury then but now is becoming a merely historical term.
Many of us who have been involved with the Internet have known for a long time that voice over IP, or Internet Telephony, would become ubiquitous. It is just so natural to utilize the global infrastructure of the Internet to send information between any two points. The world is actually a small place when you consider the speed of today's networks. I recall being at an Internet Society meeting in Honolulu in 1994 participating on a panel about the future of the Internet. A fellow panelist, Geoff Huston from Telstra, made a simple but, at the time, very controversial point. Geoff said that "voice" is "just another kind of data". What he meant, of course, was that once you speak into a handset or headset and your voice is converted to a stream of ones and zeroes, the "bits" traveling over the Internet look just like any other bits -- like from web pages, emails, efaxes, audio, video, etc.
How will I stay in touch while in South Africa? I will be taking my iPhone because that is where all my calendar and contact details are, but when it comes to phone calls and the mobile Internet, the Apple - AT&T team does not make it easy. Apple locks the iPhone so you can not put a Vodacom South Africa SIM card in it -- Apple wants to be sure to get their commission from AT&T. In South Africa, AT&T charges $2.49 per minute for inbound or outbound calls, fifty cents for a text message, and $20 per megabyte for data service. (Some modest discounts are available if you sign up for a monthly international plan). Some unwarry travelers have forgetten to turn off automatic email retrieval in their iPhone and ended up with thousands of dollars in charges from AT&T.
Maxroam is an innovative VoIP company in Ireland. For a little more than $40 they send you a SIM card which you can put into any unlocked GSM phone -- such as the Treo which I held onto after getting the iPhone. Maxroam also gives you a U.S. mobile phone number. If someone calls my iPhone while I am out of the country it will automatically forward to the Treo. If I want to make a call I dial from the Treo using whatever local GSM operator is available. The cost for Maxroam varies by country -- in South Africa it is 39 cents per minute for inbound calls and 49 cents per minute for local or outbound calls. Most outbound calls will be made from the hotel room with my ThinkPad using Skype at two cents per minute.
Where does all this lead? If innovation and competition continue -- and I believe they will -- then we will have choices. One choice will be to have a WiFi mobile phone with Skype on it. If Apple continues to thwart that option on the iPhone, others will provide it. If governments and operators cling to the old models, it will take a while but there is no doubt in my mind that we will soon have a wide range of choices of service available on the Internet -- wherever we are and with whatever devices we have.
It has been a privilege over the years to have known a number of fellows of the IEEE and now I am honored to be joining their ranks. I first joined the IEEE in 1967 during my senior year at Lehigh University. With the support of a number of industry colleagues, the senior member status followed in 1994. I had no idea that fellow might be in the future.
As far as I know, nobody at Lehigh was thinking about the Internet while I was there, but Paul Baran had been thinking about the concept since 1959 when he began working for the RAND Corporation. The cold war was underway and Paul was focused on developing a communication network that could withstand a nuclear attack. The Internet and the World Wide Web followed as a natural evolution that has now reached it's infancy. I have played a very small role and the tribute should go to Paul Baran, Vint Cert, Tim Berners-Lee and their colleagues.
Knovel Director John Patrick Named IEEE Fellow
Board Member Recognized for Internet Leadership
New York, NY – February 5th, 2008 – Knovel (www.knovel.com) today announced that John R. Patrick, a member of Knovel’s board of directors, has been named an IEEE Fellow in recognition of his leadership in technical and policy development of the World Wide Web. IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.
Mr. Patrick was a founding member of the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT in 1994 and of the Global Internet Project in 1995. Mr. Patrick was also instrumental in the development of e-commerce at IBM in 1997 as vice president for Internet technology. He is a member of the Internet Society, the Association for Computing Machinery, and The International Honor Society Beta Gamma Sigma. His book, Net Attitude, was published in 2001 and helped guide corporate strategies to leverage the Internet.
Mr. Patrick is a member of the board of directors of Jupitermedia, Knovel, Danbury Hospital and Danbury Health Systems, as well as a member of the Lehigh University Engineering Advisory Board.
“It’s great to have the IEEE validate the reason we recruited John to our board,” said Chris Forbes, CEO of Knovel. “John is a visionary with deep understanding of the role the Internet can and should play in helping people tackle their work efficiently and effectively. His insights meshed perfectly with the deep domain expertise of our board members who were principal executives at Thompson and Oxford University Press.“
About IEEE
The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) – the world's largest technical professional society – fosters technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. Through its more than 370,000 members in 160 countries, IEEE is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. Dedicated to the advancement of technology, the IEEE publishes 30 percent of the world’s literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, and has developed more than 900 active industry standards. The organization also sponsors or co-sponsors nearly 400 international technical conferences each year.
About Knovel
Knovel (www.knovel.com) is an online resource used by applied scientists and practicing engineers around the world to quickly locate relevant and reliable technical information. Knovel’s thousands of customers include 75 of the Fortune 500 companies and 300 leading engineering and science universities worldwide.
Knovel has uniquely optimized content, search capabilities, and interactive tools for specific engineering disciplines. Knovel’s content includes material properties, process and design information, standard procedures, equations, and formulations. Close to 2,000 leading reference works and databases from over 40 international publishers and professional societies are integrated to provide a single source of answers to technical questions.
The ThinkPad T60p had been acting strangely for a few weeks and I had a hunch it was going to crash. Unfortunately, it did. I called Lenovo support at 6PM Monday night and they determined that the problem was the "motherboard" needed replaced. The shipping carton arrived on Tuesday, they received the ThinkPad in Memphis on Wednesday and I received the repaired unit on Thursday morning. Nothing short of remarkable customer service. That is the good news.
The bad news is that I continue to learn more about the nuances of backup and "recovery". I should not still be learning after all these years. I suspect I am not alone. There are a number of stories about "backup" here in the blog. I don't claim to be the master of backup but I do take it very seriously. The moral of this story is to take recovery as seriously as backup. This story is a little bit more technical than usual stories but I hope it is helpful. If you are interested, please read on.
The annual "IBM Next Five in Five" is a list of predicted innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years. The list is based on market and societal trends expected to transform our lives, as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s Labs around the world that could make these innovations possible. Following is a sampling of the five areas.
The press is covered with stories about all things "green". IBM believes the technology is actually going to make it easy to be green and save money in the process. A range of "smart energy" technologies will enable us to manage our personal "carbon footprint". As data begins to run through our home electrical system, appliances, air conditioners, lights, and computers, we will become connected to a "smart" electrical grid, making it possible to turn our appliances on and off using a web browser from a PC or cell phone. In addition to alerting you about leaving appliances on when they could be off, we will be able to establish rules to be followed to automatically conserve energy. Reports will show us electrical usage just like we track our cell phone minutes. Intelligent energy grids will also enable utilities to provide you with the option to use only green energy sources such as solar and wind.
The way we drive will be changing dramatically. In the next five years, IBM says our cars will connected to the roads we drive on and thereby we will be safer and remain out of traffic jams. The technology will keep traffic flowing smoothly, cut pollution, curb accidents, and make it easier and less stressful for us to get where we are going. Intelligent traffic systems will make real-time adjustments to traffic lights and divert traffic to alternate routes while our cars will communicate with each other and with sensors along the road -- allowing them to behave as if they have 'reflexes' so they can take preventive actions under dangerous conditions. When traffic is jammed up alternative routes will be activated.
Since we are what we eat, we should know what we eat. With foods being sourced across international borders, the need to know exactly what we eat has never been more important. According to IBM, in the next five years, new advancements in software and wireless radio sensor technologies will enable us to know the exact source and make-up of the food we buy -- the climate and soil the food was grown in, the pesticides and pollution it was exposed to, the energy consumed to create the product, and the temperature and air quality of the shipping containers it traveled in on the way to our dinner table.
In the next five years, IBM says our cell phones will become our wallets, ticket brokers, concierge, bank, shopping buddy, and tour guide. New technology will allow us to snap a picture of someone wearing an outfit we want and will automatically search the web to find the designer and the nearest shop that has the outfit in stock. We will then see what that outfit would look like on our personal avatar – a 3-D representation of our self on our phone, and ask our friends to check it out online and give their opinion. When we turn on our phone in a city we are visiting, it will automatically provide us with local entertainment options, activities, and dining options that match our preferences -- and then make reservations and purchase tickets for us.
Perhaps the most important area where IBM sees major advances is healthcare. Doctors will get enhanced “super-senses” to better diagnose and treat us. In the next five years, our doctor will be able to see, hear and understand our medical records in entirely new ways. In effect, doctor’s will gain superpowers – technologies will allow them to gain x-ray like vision to view medical images and super sensitive hearing to find the tiniest audio clue in our heart beat. Our avatar will allow doctors to click on a part of our body and then visualize the relevant information for that part of us. The hospital system will then be able to compare those visual and audio clues to thousands of other anonymous patient records and be able to be much more precise in diagnosing us and providing us with a personalized treatment plan.
Some of the innovations IBM is predicting may seem like a stretch but the basics of all of them are already in place. If we were to step back five years it is likely most of us would not have foreseen how we would be doing on the Internet today.
One element of privacy on the Internet is "Opt in" versus "Opt out". When you register at a web site you will often see a small box to be checked giving you the “option” to be included or not included in subsequent emails making offers to you. Opt in means you proactively choose to be included. Opt out means you are included by default and you have to take action to be removed from the list of those who will automatically receive the emails. In some cases you have to read the words very carefully to determine which case is the default. This is part of Trust. Is the site really opening up to you and making it very clear what your options are, or are they making the words a bit fuzzy and hoping you won’t figure out what the default actually is?
Citibank introduced a service called c2it back in 2000 that enabled the sending and receiving of cash via email. You simply visited the c2it site, specified which of your checking, savings, or credit card accounts you wanted the money to come from, and entered an email address for someone you want to send the money to. That person would then receive an email, was asked to enroll in c2it, and then could accept the money from you directly into their checking, savings, or credit card account. This seemed like a potentially useful service to me when I learned about it and so I enrolled. Only after I enrolled did I find out that there were fees involved. Then I discovered that incoming amounts are not credited to your account for five to six days, which is longer than if I had received a check and deposited it myself. Then I discovered that there is no fee to receive into a Citibank credit card but there is a fee if it is another bank’s credit card. I am not saying the fees are unreasonable – the competition from PayPal and other services would determine that. C2it ceased operations in 2003. If you visit the c2it site you are told that you could contact c2it for a copy of your statement by writing a letter to "Customer Service Center" in
Sioux Falls, South Dakota and provide them with your full name, e-mail address, phone number, and a copy of your social security card, driver's license, or a telephone bill, gas or electric bill or bank statement from the last 30 days. What would they do with all that information? Probably sell it to other companies. If you have any doubt of that, just read the Citibank Privacy Notice.
Fast forwarding seven years I would have been hopeful that Citibank would become a leader in gaining our trust. Unfortunately, not the case. Who might Citibank share your personal information with? The list includes affiliates among the family of companies controlled by Citigroup as well as non-affiliated third parties, such as financial services providers and non-financial organizations, such as companies engaged in direct marketing. I can't think of much that doesn't fall into one of those categories. What information is it that they might "share"? Your name, e-mail address, zip code, age and income range, information you provide on applications and other forms, information about your transactions with affiliated or nonaffiliated third parties, information received from a consumer reporting agency and information received about you from other sources. I can't think of much that is not included.
We are talking about a sweeping allowance to provide a broad and undefined amount of information about you with a broad and undefined audience. If you touch Citibank you will quickly start receiving marketing offers. Citigroup says "We may do this even if you ask us to limit disclosure of personal information about you". Not that it really matters, as they say, but how would you make a request to have your privacy respected? You would send them a "Privacy Choices Form" by U.S. mail. Mail? Yes, snail mail. This highly automated web savvy giant can transfer money in and out of any of your accounts in milliseconds but to have your privacy respected "please allow thirty days from our receipt of your privacy choices for them to become effective".
The issue is trust. It was easy to get the feeling that Citibank was not being forthcoming about their c2it offering. Citibank reminds us that it is "allowed by law to share with its affiliates any information about its transactions or experiences with you". Should the default be “check this box if you do not want this"? Seems to me that it should be opt in not opt out.
Brand used to be a feeling conjured up by how a company's product was physically packaged or how you imagined yourself using it. Increasingly brand is a feeling conjured up by your experience on that company's web site and from it's privacy policy. These tie directly to Trust. Companies that have a web site that provides an end-to-end positive experience and which enhances people’s quality of life by saving them time will gain enhanced brand equity. The converse will become obvious. Web sites already have a repository of huge amounts of personal data that represent the byproduct of not just our registrations but also our surfing habits, our purchases, and our interactions with others. In the near future our medical records will be on a web site somewhere and beyond that will come real time data streamed from pacemakers and other medical instruments that are attached to our bodies. All of this data can bring significant benefits to us but only if we are able to trust the holders of the data and have confidence that they will protect it and respect our preferences about how and when it can be used.
Epilogue: This is not a story picking on Citibank. They are one of the giants and they put things in our physical mailboxes on a regular basis, so they have no place to hide. Unfortunately, most privacy policies out there resemble what I have discussed here.
WiFi is alive and prospering with JiWire now reporting that there are 215,777 free and paid WiFi hotspots in 135 countries. , JiWire's WiFi Hotspot Finder makes it easy to locate wireless Internet access around the globe but there are also a number of other tools available. I like the JiWire Hotspot Finder plugin for Skype. The plugin adds a "bot" to your to your list of contacts. Not sure what happens is you say "whazzup" but if you say "wifi toledo ohio", it replies to you saying "I found 45 locations with wifi within 3 miles of Toledo".
At some point not too far in the future there will be millions of hotspots and millions of mobile phones with WiFi built in. Not sure about the iPhone but millions of mobile phones will also have Skype and other VoIP applications on them. It doesn't mean free long distance but it does mean long distance at a fraction of the current cost. If you travel in Europe you know it can cost dollars per minute to call back to the U.S. I recently got a new MaxRoam SIM smart card for the Treo 700P (which I use when out of the country). MaxRoam allows you to "travel global, pay local, and your callers pay local too". You can pick a U.S. number for the card. If you are in Paris and someone calls you the U.S. it costs .21 Euros (about 30 cents) per minute. If you call the U.S. it costs .38 euros (about 56 cents) per minute. It won't be long before the words "long distance" only have meaning when it comes to air, sea, or land travel.
Meanwhile, the FON Community continues to grow. Fon wants WiFi to be available everywhere and they are doing a lot to make it happen. The idea is that FON members (foneros) share their wireless Internet access at home and, in return, enjoy free WiFi access wherever they find another Fonero’s Access Point. To become a "fonero" you go to the Fon website and order La Fonera which is a wireless access point about the size of a mobile phone. You connect La Fonera to a spare port on the back of your cable or DSL modem. La Fonera emits two wireless network signals -- a private and a public one. The private signal is encrypted and offers you complete privacy. The public signal will be accessible to Foneros only. This free signal is the one that turns your broadband connection into a FON Access Point. I think FON is a really good idea (See prior story, "How To Become A Fonero").
There will be millions of iPhones, Casio cameras, and other electronic gifts given this holiday season. If you want to give the gift of a lifetime and get satisfaction that you are helping improve the world, then consider buying a Laptop XO. For the price of an Amazon Kindle, you can be part of a really big idea. Originated at MIT, One Laptop Per Child, aims to put computers in the hands of millions of children in developing countries. "One learning child. One connected child. One laptop at a time".
The OLPC laptop has been in development for years but is now becoming a reality. Manufacturing has started and orders are being taken online between now and yearend. For $399, get a laptop for yourself -- or a lucky child you may know -- and one will also be given to a less fortunate child in Cambodia, Greece, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Uruguay, or other participating countries. (The countries themselves are buying XO's -- Nigeria ordered one million of them).
The two-for-one deal includes a full year of T-Mobile Hotspot WiFi service.
The XO has quite an impressive set of features and functions. The design optimizes power usage. The Internet connectivity is by WiFi but it also uses wireless mesh networking. This means that each XO acts as a wireless access point in a peer-to-peer fashion sharing connectivity with a nearby XO. The software is all open source and free including Linux, a web browser, word processor, email, audio and video player, and a very clever graphical user interface.
I hope large numbers of people, companies, and foundations participate in the limited time offer and that many millions of children will benefit. As an individual, the T-Mobile WiFi subscription for a year plus the $200 tax deduction for the donated laptop, it is hard to go wrong. Visit LaptopGiving.org during the holidays and you can make a difference.
Internet Technology, Media, Mobile, People, Personal Computing, Public Policy, WiFi November 25, 2007 10:56 AM
Friday, November 23, 2007
In The Clouds
There is something about clouds that brings the term into our daily lives. We say "it is a cloudy day", or "there is not a cloud in the sky", or if we feel especially elated or happy we might say "I feel like I am on cloud nine". Now days many are talking about "cloud computing".
In the early days of the Internet we thought of it as a discrete collection of specialized computers called routers which moved packets of ones and zeroes between origin and destination, plus other computers called servers which contained emails and web pages, and the networking infrastructure including telephone wires, modems, and various networking devices such as hubs and switches that loosely tied everything together. Users of the Internet today that are not aware of the technical history -- which is the vast majority of the world's billion + users -- know the Internet for it's most popular application, the World Wide Web. In a sense, the web is a "place" that contains all of the information and applications that we want to use.
In more recent years the larger web application providers, such as Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, and others have begun to refer to their infrastructure as "clouds". If you create a spreadsheet at Google Docs and then save it, where is it actually saved? In the Google "cloud". We don't know where it really is -- it is just "there" at http://docs.google.com --- in the "cloud". There are many millions of servers on the Internet but to most people there may as well just be one. That is the beauty of the Internet -- you don't have to know what the infrastructure is.
Even startup companies these days often do not bother with the details of their Internet infrastructure. Many of them use the Amazon cloud. The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (aka Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides "resizable" compute capacity in the cloud. For storage, many companies use the Amazon Simple Storage Service (aka Amazon S3) to enable storage in the cloud. The advent of cloud computing has made it possible for startup companies to get from new business idea to a full implementation of their idea in weeks instead of months.
Great for smaller companies but what the really big companies like GE, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, Bank of America, BP, or Toyota? How about when they have a new web-based idea? How do they deploy it? Generally speaking it takes a lot of detailed planning. The project manager has to specify exactly what resource is needed -- a very specific computing capacity and well defined storage. In many cases it is difficult to be precise when an idea is new. They could use Google or Amazon but chances are they would prefer to have their own cloud. The large companies of the world have vast computing resources and skills and they also have a desire to keep things inside their own tent for various security and intellectual property reasons. Enter IBM and their new plans for "Blue Cloud".
“Blue Cloud” is a series of cloud computing offerings that will allow corporate data centers to operate more like the Internet startup companies by enabling computing across a distributed, globally accessible fabric of resources, rather than today's predominantly local machines or remote server farms. Blue Cloud technology will make it possible to have the computing resource and storage be specified in "virtual" terms and the cloud will do the provisioning in an automated manner using virtual resources. Underneath the cloud there are real resources but the cloud computing environment manages them in an autonomic way. That means that the cloud responds somewhat like the human body. When we cold we shiver to warm up. When we get hot we sweat to cool down. In a similar fashion, the Blue Cloud will automatically add computing resources and storage on demand and when something breaks the cloud will provide alternate paths to keep things running. The project is based on open standards and open source software supported by IBM's hardware, software, and services businesses. More than 200 IBM researchers have been assigned to the project and the company expects it's first Blue Cloud offerings to be available to customers in the spring of 2008. The Vietnamese Ministry of Science and Technology announced a cloud computing project with IBM this month and many more are expected..
Blue Cloud will not replace the computing infrastructure of the world's enterprises any time soon but over time, this new approach to IT should dramatically reduce the complexity and costs of managing new Internet projects. Ultimately, most computing may be done in the clouds and billions of people will be interacting with data and applications with handheld devices that will be more powerful than the supercomputers of just a few years ago.
One of the many innovations Sam Palmisano has spearheaded at IBM is the idea of reaching out to "alumni". The first initiative was a few years ago when he hosted a reception for a group of former executives of the company. A few were retired but most were in senior positions in other companies. That was just the beginning and now the idea of reaching out has been expanded -- big time. The number of past and present IBMers is probably close to a million people. Establishing communications with such a huge base can be nothing but a good thing for the company.
When I left engineering school and joined IBM in 1967, it was common to look for a job at a company and expect to stay there your entire career. Nobody thinks that way anymore. If you tell someone you were with a company for decades, they might ask "what's the matter, couldn't you find any other jobs?". Another change is that in the old days if someone left the company they were considered a traitor and barred from coming back. Today, there are many executives that left the company at some point, got some experience at one or more other companies, and then brought that experience back into IBM. Some have come and gone multiple times. The turnover has strengthened the company.
And now we have social networks. In the early stages there was a perception that social networking meant eleven year-old girls on MySpace. Now businesses are realizing that it is more likely forty or fifty year-old business people on Facebook and Xing and LinkedIn and Plaxo Pulse. The Internet has enabled everyone to be connected to everyone. Whether it is reading blogs, posting to wikis, updating status on Facebook, or making new connections through viral invitations, it is clear that a big company like IBM has a lot to gain by "connecting" past, present, and future IBMers to each other and with the company. IBM calls it "the greaterIBM connection". On Monday evening the company hosted a greaterIBM reception at the Metrazur at Grand Central Station in New York. More than four hundred attended. It was good to reconnect with some colleagues I had not seen for quite a few years.
Will social networking payoff in business terms? Nobody knows for sure but in my opinion it is certain -- as soon as we see the New York Times run a front page story that social networking is a fad, in trouble or peaking out we will have confirmation that success is a sure thing. A short term inhibitor is that there are so many different social networks. As web standards evolve I am confident that we will have a world where people will create one profile and then be able to decide which part of their profile is accessible in which networks.
IBM sees the potential and is investing the time and resources to build a large and active network. The possibilities are endless -- collaboration on projects, networking to hire or get hired, crafting deals, referrals to and from IBM and its business partners. As a bonus, social networking is fun and good for morale. I look forward to continuing to be a part of the greaterIBM connection as it evolves. Upon e-tirement in 2001 after nearly four decades at IBM, I don't really feel like I left anyway! The stories that I have been writing since 1998 over at the patrickWeb blog fall into a number of categories. One section is devoted to "IBM Happenings". I am sure I will also be writing and linking at the greaterIBM connection along with others. Cross linking will increase the overall "connectedness". That's what the web is all about. I am really proud that IBM is taking networking and the blogosphere so seriously.
We all have our
favorites. Me too. Books, web sites, restaurants, plays, movies, orchestras, composers,
concerts, hiking and biking trails, places to run, etc. Occasionally
I write about these "favorites" even though they are
not really recommendations -- in fact some of them I did not even enjoy -- but rather a way of sharing information. I have documented some of the favorites in a database which can be viewed through the links below. When it comes to favorite
web pages, I started this list in 1995 and it grew to more than
1,000 "Favorite Places". I call them places because in a sense
they really are destinations.
After e-tirement from IBM in 2001 one of my (too many) goals is to "get technical" and make improvements to patrickWeb. I have really enjoyed working on this. The site, started in 1995, has been re-built with what is called a "LAMP" software bundle or "stack". That means it uses Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. All of these are free and open source. I use Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 to build the web pages and MovableType to post the blog entries. I will write some more about the LAMP technologies another time. The thing I am most proud of is converting most all of patrickWeb to being a database driven site. That means that instead of "updating" a web page with new information I update a database and then the web page is constructed to always use the latest information in the database. There are many advantages to this approach including flexibility in what information is presented on a page and how it is sequenced. A good example of this is the Favorites.
Each of the sections -- books, composers, concerts, plays, restaurants -- includes a database retrieval for just the particular category although the favorites database includes records for all of the categories. A blog "Favorites Update" page can include all the records in the database for all categories but only for the last thirty days or for any particular time period. The page is formed using a SQL query. (Structured Query Language -- invented at IBM by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce in the early 1970s). Using SQL, a page might contain favorite Cuban restaurants visited in the past year rated better than "3" and concerts that included "Clint Black" between 2002 and 2004 -- or whatever. Very powerful, and fun to create. At some point I plan to build a page on patrickWeb that let's any visitor create there own queries into the favorites database.
JiWire is now listing 202,894 WiFi hotspots in 135 countries. Where is Wifi headed? I don’t claim to have a crystal ball but I believe the evolution
continues to look very much like what we have seen before with the Internet and the World Wide Web. There was a long list
of reasons fifteen years ago for why the Web would never turn into something serious
-- certainly not into something that could be used for secure business transactions.
The same list of shortcomings is at times attributed to WiFi even today – security, scalability, reliability, business model, etc. Just
like the Web, WiFi is grass roots, standards based, and very decentralized.
Just like with the Web, WiFi has become mainstream.
The benefits are compelling. There are active debates about whether WiMax will replace WiFi -- it may or may not. (See WiFi Update No. 8 for more about WiMax). Odds look good to me at this point but not a sure thing. What is a sure thing is the continued evolution and adoption of wireless broadband.
WiFi and other wireless technologies are making the Internet “always on” and extending it to more people
and more devices at more locations. This will result in more people doing more
transactions which in turn will fuel the continued growth of information technology
spending which in turn will provide more productivity to the economy. The constant question over the past fifteen years has been about where the money is in WiFi.
The ultimate beneficiaries are consumers but the information technology industry
will continue to benefit also as hardware, software and services will be needed
to support the growth.
WiFi will have a
major impact on the telecommunications industry. The iPhone is the tip of the iceberg. The telecommunications companies have made a quiet embrace on WiFi but don't really want it to catch on too fast so that people can use Skype for a call to Europe for a few cents per minute instead of a cellular call for $1.49 per minute. In the long run the increase
in Internet usage made possible by WiFi will mean more “bits on the wire”; i.e. more traffic and utilization
of the backbones of the Internet which are provided by the telecom industry.
In spite of the slow embrace, the telcos will find that Internet
telephony will emerge as a major application on the Net even though it will help reduce "long distance" revenue dramatically. More devices with WiFi will mean more choices for consumers -- something that the telcos don't like. They would much rather see us locked into a two year contract with a phone of their choice. They won't be able to do that much longer as consumers wake up to what is possible.
The telecommunications industry needs to start thinking differently about the
Internet. Especially in the U.S. they still think that the Internet is one of the many services that you can
get via a telecom service. Unfortunately, they have it backwards. Internet telephony (a voice conversation) is one of the many things you can do with the Internet!
“Voice” is just another Internet application. The handwriting is on the wall.
WiFi hardware for home and business has become very affordable and reliable. Doesn't seem that long ago that a WiFi access point was more than $1,000, required a lot of electricity, and had limited speed, poor security, and utilized a very early version of the 802.11 standard. Last month I installed a Linksys "Wireless-N Gigabit Security Router with VPN". The standard has evolved from "b" to "g" to "n" with increasingly better security, speed, and range. What I like most about this new device is the VPN feature. A Virtual Private Network is not a new idea but the implementation of the VPN in the new Linksys device is impressive. A second unit is installed at the "getaway" house in Pennsylvania. A simple procedure lets you create a "tunnel" between the two houses directly from one router to the other. You can be in either place and have access to everything on a computer int he other place just as though it was plugged into the local area network. It basically allows a LAN (local) at each end to be connected by the WAN (wide area network aka the Internet). All the trafic through the "tunnel" is encrypted. There are many uses but most important to me are security and HVAC control. From either house it is very simple to check the temperature at the other, turn the heat up or down, set or reset security, or "see" what is going on through a web camera. You can also install a VPN client on your laptop and have "local" access to both homes while you are on the road.
Meanwhile, computer engineers at the University of Massachusetts have built a wireless communications network called TurtleNet which includes waterproof computers attached to the shells of snapping turtles. Without disturbing any of the daily activities, the turtles can swap information whenever they within 500 feet of each other. The biologists believe that the data gained will help the species in the long run.
The most encouraging thing about the iPhone is that Apple seems to be listening to the feedback of customers. The price cut rebate was handled well -- and expeditiously -- but compared to the other issues it was an easy fix. Other than various functionality, which I am sure will be continuously improved, the two big issues remain the applications and the network.
There are four kinds of applications. First are the "standalone" applications such as the calculator, calendar, photo gallery, clock, and offline email. No network required. A second type could be classified as "networked" applications. Examples would be stocks, weather, over the air email, and YouTube. Each of these is a combination of a standalone application plus a network connection -- either via AT&T's network or from a WiFi hotspot. A third type of application is a networked application which works only with WiFi. Example being iTunes. The fourth type is the "webapp" or as described by Steve Jobs "Web 2.0" applications. The webapps work through the Safari browser. There will surely be many useful webapps but there are two important limitations.
First is that webapps are most useful when they are connected to the network, preferably a fast one. The presumption with webapps is that the data -- travel itineraries, frequent flier numbers, healthcare information, personal financial information, etc. -- is on the server. That model only works if you can get to the server. Some people 8 gigabytes is not enough to have local data in addition to music and pictures. I think many people would happily make the tradeoff to have a bit fewer songs and have some accessible local data. the 8 gig limitation is only temporary as we will have a terabyte of local storage before long.
The other limitation of webapps is the interface. In theory you can do anything in a web browser but the human interface is not always ideal. That is why millions of people use Quicken instead of quicken.com. This will change over time as web standards evolve but in the short term I believe there is a rational need for local applications. A perfect example is Navizon which is a software-only wireless positioning system that triangulates signals broadcasted from WiFi access points and cellular towers which pinpoints your location and then launches a Google Map to show you where you are. (This is one of the third party applications that Apple erased with their recent firmware update). There are many applications that could be local applications with local storage on the iPhone. Both the app and data could be synchronized (backed up) through iTunes.
There is no doubt in my mind that enabling third party local applications on the iPhone as a supplement to webapps would be a great thing for Apple. I also have no doubt that Steve Jobs thinks so too. Apple announced this week that they will have a development kit available in the first quarter. This will spawn a flood of new iPhone applications. If anything, I believe Apple underestimated how many developers, in addition to the high-end personal digital assistant users, would take quickly to the iPhone and start building third party applications. Mr. Jobs says they need the time to make sure there are tools to enable the local applications to be built in a way that protects against viruses and other malware. The hubris of wiping out the third party applications was not a good move, but as I started this story I do believe Apple is listening and I am optimistic that in a matter of months we will see a lot of very useful and exciting applications emerge for the iPhone.
The price cut is understandable. It is not unprecedented by any means and the rebate was handled well by Apple. Nobody was forced to be an early adopter. People were forced to sign up for AT&T but it was no secret. It was announced that way, promoted that way, and is somewhat understandable even though I don't personally like it because of poor network coverage where I live and poor network performance when there is coverage. I can also understand why a warranty would be voided if people physically break in to the iPhone and modify it. That is a standard warranty provision with cars and most everything. A software modification is a different issue from my point of view.
I need to clarify my comment that I got "bricked" last week. Walt Mossberg properly corrected me that getting bricked means that your iPhone is not functioning at all -- it is like a brick. That is not what happened to me. I believe in most all cases where someone got bricked it was because they had tampered with the iPhone or somehow bypassed AT&T and enabled the phone to work with T-Mobile or someone else. I can understand why Apple would not like that because of their deal with AT&T and the fact that it has always been marketed as an Apple - AT&T exclusive arrangement. In my case, I made no attempt to change out AT&T. I just added the "installer" from AppTapp from Nullriver. This enabled me to add a bunch of third party applications that added a great deal of missing functions and new capabilities. I was really happy with the new applications.
I can understand that neither Apple nor AT&T would offer technical support for third party applications that they have not certified. I could even understand that they may require them to be uninstalled if suspected of causing a problem with the iPhone or the AT&T service for which I requested assistance. The issue I made in my last update was not of that nature. The issue was that Apple unilaterally *deleted* all the third party applications, including any data that may have been created by the apps, and also deleted the launcher and installer. An industry colleague described this unprecedented move by Apple as "hostile". I have to agree. Another colleague called it hubris. Some might describe it as arrogance.
I remember in the 1970's when IBM was accused of such an attitude. If a customer had a mainframe maintenance problem and they also had "third party" memory or peripheral devices attached to the mainframe, IBM would refuse to work on the mainframe or even diagnose the problem. Later they loosened up and agreed to "take a look" at the problem but only if someone was present from the maintenance department of the "other" company. IBM had a significant comeuppance as a result of the unwarranted attitude. Eventually -- in the late 1980's -- IBM saw a services opportunity in working on *all* of the customer's equipment, no matter who manufactured it.
A similar situation may be at hand for Apple. What could be better than having thousands of developers around the world creating useful applications for the iPhone? That is how Palm got established. Apple is now gaining on Palm but if they don't watch their hubris they may have a comeuppance.
The $100 rebate was a good move by Apple. I was impressed that within a couple of weeks they had a rock solid online application to actually get the rebate coupon. Considering the testing needed to put out a public web application it was very timely. Big companies often take months to do something like this. I took the coupon into the local Apple store and bought a VModa Vibe Duo noise-isolating hi-definition headset for the iPhone. The sleek “hands-free” microphone and amazing high-definition sound are quite impressive. The discrete microphone blends seamlessly with the black fabric cable. It comes with a black leather pouch and is remarkably lightweight. The store rep offered to send my purchase receipt via email. I was impressed.
From a business point of view the rebate not only took the sting out of the big price cut impacting the early adopters but will ultimately be the sleeves out of Apple's vest. One of the financial analysts said the cost of the rebate to Apple would be $100 million. I don't believe that for a second. First of all, some percentage of those who are eligible will never bother to pursue the rebate. Others will follow the (simple) online procedure and print out the coupon and leave it on their desk to get lost. Some of those who do take the initiative to use the rebate will go to an Apple store and see a host of goodies for sale which will leave an impression with them. When it comes to spending the $100, I suspect most will spend more than $100 rather than leave money on the table. Some may buy a Mac Mini or a big monitor or some software. Whatever they walk out with it will add to the amount of Apple computing and accessories that are in people's hands and will lead to more purchases in the future and continued increases in market share for Apple.
That's the good news. Now the bad news. Like many others, I got bricked on Thursday night -- the Net is buzzing with commentary about it. As previously reported, one of the two major shortcomings of the iPhone is the availability of applications (the other being the AT&T network). Skeptics were pessimistic about the speed of introduction of improvements and believed that Apple and AT&T would operate an approval and collection gate for anything new. I was more optimistic. I turned out to be wrong -- so far. When Steve Jobs said the iPhone would be open to Web applications he meant applications that worked through the Apple Safari browser, not applications that worked natively as part of the iPhone menu. Then along came AppTapp from a company called Nullriver in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. Someone at Demo showed me a link where you can download an "installer" that puts a new icon on the iPhone. When you click the icon the iPhone shows a list of dozens (maybe hundreds) of third party applications that work on the iPhone. These are not web apps but native iPhone apps. Apps that do not require being connected to the AT&T network. These are apps that have nothing to do with who the network provider is and do not involved cracking open the case and using a soldering iron. They are just apps that use the iPhone as a platform to run. The first app I installed was a launcher. This icon displays a menu of the iPhone third party apps that you have installed. I installed a dozen or so very useful new things.
The first app I chose was Navizon, a software-only wireless positioning system that triangulates signals broadcasted from WiFi access points and cell towers and then displays a Google Map of where you are. You can then click "Directions to here" or "Directions from here". By using the incredible squeeze magnification feature of the iPhone you can zoom in on either the map or satellite images of where you are. This is a really great value-added application for the iPhone. I also installed an instant messaging program that let me IM through AOL IM and pedometer app that uses the iPhone accelerometer to measure how far you have walked.. Other applications include dictionaries of various kinds, games, and programs that allow you to see all the files on your iPhone and more importantly allow you to create files and exchange them with your PC. This could solve my problem of not being able to display my frequent flier and hotel account numbers like I could on the Treo. In summary I found the initial set of third party applications empowering and exciting. That was until I got home late Thursday night and put the iPhone in the dock and got the latest iPhone "update" from Apple. The update added iTunes to the iPhone, a very nice addition indeed, but it also *deleted* all the third party applications including the launcher and installer. An industry colleague described this unprecedented move by Apple as "hostile".
Apple has now created the iBrick -- an iPhone that doesn't do nearly what it can do. Ironically, third party apps are the heart and soul of the Mac. Microsoft and Apple both have their office suites and various applications but without third party applications we would not have a fraction of what we have as users. Apple has basically said that the iPhone is theirPhone. You can install only the applications that they (and AT&T) decide are good for you and for which they will decide how much you will pay. Imagine turning on your computer one day and seeing a message saying that Windows (or Mac OS X) has "been updated" and then you find that Quicken, Dreamweaver, OpenOffice, Adobe Photoshop, Google Desktop, AOL Instant Messenger, Skype, and dozens of other things you are dependent on have been *deleted* and a modification was installed that will prevent any further additions of third party software on your computer. That is what we have here.
The important letter in PC is the P, for personal. I think of my PC as *my* PC. Millions of people use only what Microsoft or Apple provide and don't take the risk of downloading and installing third party software. They may consider it rogue software, be concerned about the possibility of the software containing a virus or crashing the computer -- all of which are risks. Millions of others, like me, accept some risk and like to experiment with new software and capitalize on the infinite creativity of software developers. I have a ThinkPad that came with Windows XP on it. I erased that and put Ubuntu Linux and VMWare on it. Millions of people use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office, partly because OO is free and partly because they just choose to. That is the great thing about the Internet and PC's -- they give us choice.
What is next? I am sure people are hard at work to figure out how to make third party software work on iPhone again. Many iPhone users are going to Hackintosh for instructions on how to downgrade their iPhone to the prior version of firmware so they can reinstall the third party software. What is the prognosis? I am not politically liberal but when it comes to the Internet and personal computers I guess I would be called a libertarian. The question to me is whether mobile computing is going to be a locked-down proprietary world controlled by Apple, AT&T, Verizon, Qualcomm, and a few others or whether it is going to be an open highly creative and collaborative world like the Internet and PC's have been. I would never bet against the grass roots.
Apple did listen when the mass market said it wanted downloadable ringtones for the iPhone but their implementation is not as brilliant as other aspects of the iPhone. Apple is charging 99 cents to make a song you already paid 99 cents for into a ringtone. I purchased an album called "Crazy Ringtone #2". It contains some really good tracks. When I tried to add the ringtones to my iPhone I got an error message saying that these particular ringtones do not qualify to be iPhone ringtones, even though I had purchased them through iTunes. Meanwhile we are stuck with the sparse and weak AT&T network. The iPhone is an ingenious and elegant piece of hardware -- it is a very powerful and well designed mobile computer. The iBricking of the iPhone has really soured me on Apple. I haven't given up but now that I see how powerful iPhone applications can be I will be more impatient to see the platform open up more.
A friend of mine said that Google has increased everyone's IQ by 100. Web search -- whether it is Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com, or any of the many specialized search engines -- have certainly changed our lives. I am continuously surprised at what I can find but today I received an email out of the blue that really highlighted the impact of the Internet on searching for things. A realtor in Auburn, Alabama received a phone call about a home he has listed. The caller was named John Patrick but had a blocked number and left no information on how to contact him. The realtor did some web searching on my name and apparently found my web site and discovered I had gone to grad school at the University of South Florida. This past weekend Auburn played South Florida in a football game and he surmised that the call had come from me and would I be interested in talking about a home for sale in Auburn, Alabama. At first I thought it was spam that got through my filter but then realized it was actually legitimate albeit flawed research. It was unlikely leap of logic to make the connection but it shows the tremendous power of the Internet.
Many of us do not want to be found, analyzed, searched for, or advertised to. Many just want their privacy. I am quite confident that Internet technology will give us as much privacy as we want over time, but there are many who are not looking for privacy but rather are looking for connections. This is why there is such a huge rise in social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Quechup, Multiply, MySpace, and countless others. The social networking sites are not just social and they are not just young people. In addition to facilitating the sharing of movies, music, meeting new people, and just hanging out and socializing, these people oriented sites are helping make connections. Finding jobs, finding prospective employees, making deals, starting collaborations are all possible and happening. The emerging challenge I see is that there are so many "social networks" that it can be all consuming to join them and participate in them. I have no doubt that someone will attempt to become the network of networks. In a sense that is how I see it going -- an intersection of network spaces. Facebook had a brilliant idea with their introduction of applications. These are applications developed by Facebook users themselves. As of this morning there are 3,959 applications ranging from dating to fashion to sports to calculating your carbon footprint. As the World Wide Web evolves into the semantic web it is likely that the various applications and information such as found at Facebook will become compatible and the network of networks will indeed be the new web. There is a lot to look forward to.
The news of a $200 price cut on the iPhone made a lot of people quite upset, although the announced $100 rebate took out some of the sting. I think of the $200 as an early adopter tax. Everyone has the choice to wait until the bugs get worked out and the pricing stabilizes. Although the cut came quickly and was significant, such actions are not unprecedented in high-tech, especially in the mobile space. The price cut will surely accelerate demand and more users means more interest from more software developers resulting in more useful applications for all users. After two months of using the iPhone, I remain captivated with the brilliant user interface. I have also been using the iPod feature of the iPhone a lot more and find it to be superb, as iPods have always been. If a phone call comes in you just say hello, have your conversation, say good bye, and the music returns. Seamless.
The lack of an iPhone copy and paste capability remains a major shortcoming for me. Back from the lake and taking the train to New York for a board meeting quickly reminded me of how dependent I have been on the Palm Treo 700P which contained train schedules. I copied the schedules from the MTA web site, pasted them into an Outlook note and then synched the notes with the Treo. The iPhone has notes also but you can't paste anything into them and they don't sync with anything, making them basically useless. I am sure everyone has their iPhone wish list -- for me it is copy/paste. There have been two updates to the iPhone software so far -- one per month is not bad -- but neither of them added any new functions. The other annoying shortcoming is that weather locations, stocks, and favorite phone numbers are not sorted alphabetically. I remain confident that Apple will step up to the shortcomings and continue to delight customers. The really big issues with the iPhone are two -- the Network and the availability of applications.
AT&T, without a doubt, is the weakest part of the product. Apple touts the iPhone as the “Internet in your pocket”. This is only true if you sign-up for two years with AT&T, and if AT&T happens to have an adequate signal where you happen to be. I travel a lot on Interstate 84 between Danbury, Connecticut and Scranton, Pennsylvania and surrounding areas. Coverage is very spotty throughout. In the Connecticut town of 25,000 where I live, there is almost no coverage. AT&T calls their network "Allover". Right. When you do have an AT&T connection to their "Edge" network, it is extremely slow. Fortunately, the WiFi support in the iPhone is very good, but WiFi is not everywhere just yet (more on that in an upcoming posting). The iPhone is truly a network device and without a good network even a great device can't do much. On the positive side, you can tell that AT&T is trying really hard to offer good customer service. Their people are courteous and responsive, in spite of the ancient backend systems and processes that support them. They call themselves "the new AT&T", but when the first charge showed up on my American Express bill it was labeled "CING*517655729 Snerocky Hill". I am guessing this meant Cingular, an account number, and Southern New England Rocky Hill (a town in Connecticut). Between that and the forty-four page bill replete with errors in the account plans I had chosen, I get the feeling the "new AT&T" is actually a collection of old companies and systems that AT&T hopes to weave into a new enterprise. Their pricing models are also antiquated. A call to Norway on the iPhone is $1.49 per minute. If you sign up for an international calling at $3.99 per month, the same call to Norway is sixteen cents per minute. International calling is surely the highest profit margin part of their business. When someone comes up with a way to enable Skype on the iPhone the obscene international rates will drop. If you work for a large company that gets a discount from AT&T you will find out that those discounts do not apply if you have an iPhone. Bottom line, the exclusive deal between AT&T and Apple may be a good deal for them but for the customer it is yet another example of reducing choice for consumers, just the opposite of what they want. A web site called Free The iPhone is pushing for what they call Wireless Freedom -- "the freedom to use all Internet devices on any wireless network in a market that offers true high-speed Internet and real consumer choice". Some people look to government to solve this problem and others look to hackers. I would prefer competition as the solution and the iPhone is the beginning, not the end, of the race.
PalmGear.com claims to have 29,000 applications. The iPhone has just a handful -- the basics -- so far. I thought we would see some new apps by now but am still confident there will be many of them soon. The new applications will become available through iTunes, just like music except that the applications will likely have to be approved by AT&T, the exclusive provider of network support to the iPhone. This is analogous to finding an Internet application for your PC but not being able to download and install it unless your Internet Service Provider approves. Not good. The good news is that the iPhone will support any Web 2.0 application from the Safari browser. One application called AppMarks provides an iPhone-like menu in a web page thus avoiding the need to go through iTunes and AT&T. In other words AppMarks is providing a separate menu with an icon for each iPhone web application. The icons look just like the icons that are on the iPhone home page and you can add, delete or edit them. The larger overall question is whether the predominant application environment for the iPhone will be a locked down proprietary thing controlled by Apple and AT&T or whether it will be more like an open web environment. I expect to see a lot more clues on this in the weeks and months ahead and hope to be pleasantly surprised.
I felt very fortunate to turn 62 earlier this month but I would feel even more fortunate if I was Sigbritt Lothberg. Not because she has reached the distinctive age of 75 but because she has the world's fastest Internet connection. Ms. Lothberg -- of Karlstad, Sweden -- has a 40 gigabit-per-second connection. That means that, if she was so inclined, she could download a full-length movie to her home computer in less than 2 seconds! That would be 75,000 times faster than what most of us get from a cable modem. Lothberg's son, Peter, worked with a town official to install the connection which uses a new modulation technique that allows the sending of data between two routers -- the specialized computers that move packets of ones and zeroes around the Internet -- placed up to 1,240 miles apart. Although this is not a likely scenario, it does show the possibilities for Internet speed. Peter says "she didn't even have a computer before." Apparently she isn't exactly making the most of her high-speed connection. She only uses it to read Web-based newspapers, but that is not the point.
The point is that -- especially in America -- there is not enough competition. While Ms. Lothberg is enjoying lightning speed with her Internet connection, AT&T and Verizon are each spending more than $20 million per year on lobbying. Unfortunately, much of the lobbying is aimed at preventing competition, especially in the wireless area. There is a perception that wireless is inherently much slower than "wired" connections. Actually, the ones and zeroes do not care whether they are moving through copper, or glass fiber, over the power grid, or through the air. The issue is not technology, it is about having widely available and open wireless networks with lots of competition. Some people worry that Google is the next juggernaut, like IBM in the 1960's and Microsoft in the 1990's, but if it was not for Google, the spectrum that will be made available for new wireless networks when TV goes digital in 2009, that spectrum would all be gobbled up by AT&T and Verizon to be parceled out according to their (limited) vision of what is possible and in a very proprietary way. If Google and others get a hold of that spectrum we will have an open approach and likely see some breakthroughs in speed and coverage for the wireless Internet.Stay tuned for a WiFi update in the next few days.
After another couple of weeks using the iPhone, I remain captivated, especially with the brilliant user interface. I also continue to discover some shortcomings. One glaring example is the lack of copy and paste, something I took for granted with the Palm Treo 700P which I sold last week on eBay for $320). There have been many occasions when I wanted to copy something from an email or SMS text message and paste it into a "Note" which I could then sync with Outlook and subsequently paste into a new web page or email or whatever. Copy/paste is the duck tape of a computer but the iPhone does not have it. This is a non-trivial limitation.
The big issue -- and possible solution to the lack of copy/paste -- is applications. The Palm has thousands; the iPhone has just the basics -- so far. If you watch the video interview on Podtech of some of the 300 who turned out for the iPhone developer's conference you could get very optimistic. Developers are building applications that follow Web standards and which can utilize the unique user interface of the iPhone and work with the Safari browser. I took a look at one of the applications already available called AppMarks. I was quite impressed. It allows you to create icons on a web page -- in other words it gives you a web page with an icon for each iPhone web application. The icons look just like the icons that are on the iPhone home page and you can add, delete or edit them..
If nothing else, the iPhone is calling more attention to the fact that most people will be using web applications from a handheld device. The leader at this so far appears to be Opera Software of Norway with it's new Opera mini browser which works on nearly any mobile phone. A very positive story about surfing on your phone appeared in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. I recommend reading it. The point of the story was that people using a handheld device will expect to be able to have full access to the web, not just the content and applications that Verizon or AT&T or Sprint have "approved". The operators argue it is "for your own protection" and there is an argument there but somehow we have thrived with full access to the web with our PC without getting approval from our Internet Service Provider when we want to add something new. That is how it has to be for handhelds.
Apple has taken a good step in the right direction but by not opening up the phone to developers like Palm and Microsoft have done, the iPhone is totally dependent on web applications. In addition the iPhone has no local storage which means your data has to be on a server somewhere. It is very much like the "thin client" model that Oracle, IBM and others tried some years ago. It was not successful because the network was not as reliable, ubiquitous, and fast as assumed. Now with the iPhone we have AT&T -- without a doubt the weakest part of the product. It will be a horse race to see if AT&T can improve it's slow and spotty network and if WiFi can continue toward ubiquity in time to make the iPhone a superior choice to Palm, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, et al who have handhelds with local storage, multiple networks to choose from, and an application interface to allow building local applications.
I already miss the Treo where I had quite a few applications. For example, an application called Worldmate acted as my travel assistant -- it converted currencies, times, and all units of measure, kept track of weather and flight itineraries, and provided many other useful tools. Another application called Healthfile allowed me to store all my medications, doctor visits, blood pressure, blood chemistry, tests, etc. Both of these appllications stored data on the storage card on the Treo and allowed me to synchronize the data with my ThinkPad. The applications are available on more than a dozen different phone brands. The iPhone does not have them. Could it have them as web apps with the data stored on a server somewhere? Yes, definitely, but only if WiFi or AT&T are available. In the long run I am optimistic. In the next year or two I am not so sure. I hope to be pleasantly surprised.
The trip to New York for a board meeting last week went smoothly. Traffic was light -- even within the city -- and I got to the hotel lobby in much better than normal time. The one thing that went less well than it could have the check in process at the Radisson Martinique on Broadway. After a long wait line I was greeted by a person at the desk. Hoteliers actually think that guests want to be greeted by an employee and have them ask how you are today. One would think that they would realize is that the most important thing a guest wants to get to their room. I had a reservation. All the information about me is already in the reservation record and the frequent stayer record. In spite of this the hotel agent had to enter a lot of keystrokes for some reason. The only thing they did not have was authentication. They wanted to make sure I was the person I said I was. I showed them my driver's license in the flip-up plastic window of my wallet but that was not good enough. The agent had to go to the back office and make a photocopy. No wonder the waiting line is so long.
The solution to speeding up and improving the accuracy of the authentication process is the use of biometrics. The technology has been around for decades. Pick your favorite -- hand geometry, fingerprint, iris scan, face scan, or voice print. There are many working solutions available today from many vendors. None are perfect and that is why we don't see more implementations. Rather than take a leadership approach, many institutions in effect say, "we can't do *anything* until it is perfect. Some lawyers say that if it hasn't been to the Supreme Court then don't use it. The result is that we stand in line waiting for someone to photocopy what might be a stolen driver's license.
My favorite approach is hand vascular pattern biometric a technology that originated from a conventional vein pattern recognition system. Studies show that 99.98% of the world's adult population can use it. It is highly secure because there is no back door, such as a key or numeric password. Fingerprint devices suffer from usability because some users have faint fingerprints while iris and retina scan devices may not be appropriate for people with eye diseases. On the other hand, no pun intended, hand vascular patterns are unique to each of us and to each hand. The chance of someone being incorrectly recognized is 0.0001%. Not perfect but that is good enough for me. The best part is that hand vascular scanning does not require physical contact, compared to fingerprint scanners which require users to press a finger onto the scanner in order to capture the print. The idea of wiping your finger over something that millions of other people have wiped their fingers seems inconsistent with what people on cruise ships are told. One other subtly for increased security with hand scanning is that because of the sensor's capability to sense the user's temperature, there assurance that the hand is alive. Being able to establish that we are who we say we are could speed the lines at airports, hotels, sporting events, and hospitals.
The Seven Wonders of the World is an expression that is as old as I can remember but it turns out there are actually multiple lists. Recently a non-profit organization called New7Wonders decided the list needed an update and so they set about to seek nominations -- almost 200 came in -- and then the list was narrowed to the 11 most-voted by the start of 2006. About 100 million votes were cast "by the Internet and cell phone text messages" and the new list was announced shortly after the fourth of July (2007). As you can imagine, there is a lot of controversy surrounding the list.
The most interesting part to me is not the list per se but the process used to "elect" the winners. According to the Associated Press, "Organizers admit there was no foolproof way to prevent people from voting more than once for their favorite". A simple step would have been to not allow more than one vote from the same email address or cell phone. Of course many people have multiple phones and addresses but at least disallowing clear duplicates would be a step in the right direction. The only foolproof way to assure no duplicates would be to have some form of strong authentication. Authentication is the single most important gap in the integrity of the Internet (and mobile text messaging). If I borrow (or steal) your cell phone I can send a message as though I am you. If you put your login and password on a Post-It stuck to your desk and someone visiting your house "borrows" it, then they become you. The bottom line is "Who are you – really?".
There was a cartoon by Peter Steiner in the July 5, 1993 issue of The New Yorker showing a dog at a PC speaking to another dog watching from the floor. The caption was, “On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.” Very true and in fact nobody really knows for sure just who you are when you are online. Nor do you know who is at the other end of an IM, text message, or eCommerce transaction. Technology is available to make things different by using "digital IDs". Unfortunately, there has been a prevailing attitude that digital IDs would mean that the “government” would issue an ID that would then enable them to spy on us; read our email, track what we do on the web, or invade our privacy in some way. I have a much more positive view -- that digital ID’s are not to be feared but in fact should be embraced. They represent the empowerment that can unleash the full potential of the Internet. They will allow us establish that we are who we say we are and to validate that the web server we are doing business with is really who they say they are. Security, per se, is not the issue. Authentication is.
Today we use the login ID and password as a substitute for authentication. We all use them every day but the problems with them are non-trivial. First is the password sharing problem that enables someone else to be you. Assuming you keep your password to yourself, there is another set of problems. Web sites have different rules for login Ids and passwords. Some require that you use your email ID as your login, some require you to use your social security number, others allow you to pick anything you want as long as it is at least so many characters or in other cases as long as it is no more than so many characters or that it starts with a capital letter or that it have at least two numbers in it, etc. For good reasons they all require that your ID be unique. Sorry, but jjones is already taken. The same thing is the case for the password. Some require at least so many characters, some require that a password must contain at least one numeric character, some require that it be all numeric, and others require that it contain no numeric characters. The variations are vast and the result is that you end up with a lot of different IDs and passwords. I have more than 200. Digital IDs to the Rescue. (read more)
A video of Ira Magaziner's talk at last week's eCommerce celebration in Washington can be found here and a video of my wrap-up talk, which I called "The Future of the Internet", is here.
Ken Wasch is a fellow alum (Economics and International Relations) from Lehigh University and a law graduate of SUNY Buffalo in New York. After spending eight years as a senior attorney for the U.S. Department of Energy working on petroleum price regulation, Ken saw the light and established the Software Publishers Association (1984) which is now the Software & Information Industry Association. I have known Ken for more than half of his twenty-two years in the industry, so when he called to ask me to participate in a conference to celebrate an important milestone for eCommerce, it was hard to resist.
A handful of us joined with Tim Berners-Lee to start the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT in December 1994. None of us at the time foresaw today's level or potential for eCommerce. Most of the focus at that time was on techniques for formatting web pages and on various other content related issues. Jim Clark, founder of Netscape, did see the eCommerce potential and he also realized one of the biggest inhibitors was the U.S. Government regulation of encryption, a key tool for making eCommerce secure. Jim and a handful of us started the Global Internet Project as a public policy group to gain more awareness about encryption and urge governments around the world to loosen the reigns. That effort was successful and use of encryption is no longer an inhibitor. (The inhibitor is insufficient Net Attitude to enable web sites to meet our needs).
There were many other complexities looming under the surface that could have dramatically stalled the growth of eCommerce. Collectively it was a hodgepodge of sticky issues -- like non-U.S. countires that objected to the U.S. control over key elements of the Internet infrastructure -- but the biggest issue was a lack of vision. There was no consistent framework for eCommerce that could enable businesses to move forward. One of the first of the Fortune 500 to put a stake in the ground was IBM Corporation where Lou Gerstner said in 1997 the web is not for surfing, it is for transactions -- later named e-Business. The gamble being taken by IBM and many others was that the Internet would become internationally politicized and potentially regulated to a standstill. Fortunately, there was a person in a high place in the government that would help solve many of the tough issues and enable President Clinton to announce a “Framework for Global Electronic Commerce” in the summer of 1997. It was a huge accomplishment for which we should all be eternally grateful. The person who lead the effort was Ira Magaziner, a top aide at the White House. Ira is best known for his efforts to create a major American healthcare program. His effort got attacked from every political direction and eventually fell. Unlike healthcare, the Internet was not well understood by politicians and they stayed out of the way as Ira raised and solved many of the key issues. He then traveled around the world enlightening key government leaders. The rest is history. At the conference last week Ira modestly said the event was "a good reminder of how far we have come and of how much opportunity still remains". Ken Wasch said “Electronic commerce has provided a significant engine for the growth of the global economy and has sparked the delivery of a multitude of innovative products and services.”
It was my privilege to serve on a panel moderated by Michael Mandel, chief economist of BusinessWeek. The other panelists were Stewart Baker, Assistant Secretary, Department of Homeland Security; Dan Burton, Senior Vice President, at Salesforce.com and former President of the Council on Competitiveness; Jamie Estrada, Assistant Secretary (Acting) at the U.S. Department of Commerce, and Ira Magaziner who is now Chairman of the Clinton Foundation. To set the stage for discussion, Michael announced the results of a poll of thought leaders in the industry in which they voted on the most significant "eCommerce Developments of the Last Decade". The results are so commonplace to all of us that it is hard to believe that they are ten years or so old. No surprise, Google (Sept. 1998) came out on top. Number two was when broadband penetration of US Internet users reached 50% (June 2004). Third was eBay Auctions (Launched Sept. 1997). Fourth was Amazon.com (went public in May 1997). Fifth was Google Ad Words (2000) which enabled key word advertising. Sixth -- Open Standards. Seven -- WiFi. Eight - User-Generated Content (YouTube 2005). Ninth was iTunes (2001) and last but not least, the BlackBerry (1999). See the SIIA press release for more details on the top ten.
It was my privilege to give the wrap-up talk which I called "The Future of the Internet". I asserted that the Internet has grown to it's infancy and that we have so far only seen five percent of what the Internet has in store for our business and personal lives. The examples used were things often written about here in patrickWeb. A video of Ira Magaziner's talk is here and my closing speech is here.
After a week of using the iPhone, I remain captivated, but less so. As I gain more experience with the elegantly designed jewel, I am more impressed but also begin to see some shortcomings. My primary and secondary email accounts work fine with the iPhone but it requires having two mailboxes instead of consolidating into one like other email clients. When deleting things in a list -- such as old emails -- you have to do it one at a time. When scrolling through the contact list you can't key bsm and get Bill Smith. You have to scroll through all the s's. Synchronizing photos with Adobe Photoshop Elements and grabbing new photos from the iPhone are both mysteries to me at this point. I know they can be done and am confident I will figure it out but these things are not as intuitive as the rest of the iPhone. As for shortcomings generally, I am confident that there will be updates via iTunes that will render the iPhone better and better over the months ahead. Remember, iTunes is on release 7.3. Continuous improvement seems to be a mantra for all things iApple.
The most significant shortcoming of the iPhone is definitely AT&T. My greatest fear came true when I got back to Connecticut after having taken initial delivery of the iPhone in Pennsylvania. There is no usable AT&T signal at my house. If I get in the car and drive a short distance things are fine. It also worked well in Stamford, CT and Washington, DC where I had meetings this week. I am sure it will work fine in all major cities. I do have a landline but at times it is nice to be able to make and receive mobile calls at home. I am no fan of Verizon but they do have better coverage in many areas. Also, when connected to the AT&T network the performance is not good. AT&T claims to be adding towers and fine tuning their network. I hope so.
The good news is the WiFi feature of the iPhone. Whether it is my home wireless or one at a hotel or airport, the iPhone connects very smoothly and remembers how to connect automatically the next time. The use of email, weather and stock updates and of course the web are all automatically handled by WiFi if it is available. JiWire is now listing 150,958 free and paid WiFi hotspots in 136 countries. Stay tuned for an update on other developments in WiFi.
A number of people commented about the mini review of the iPhone from yesterday. Early experience from others mostly matches mine but some have pointed out things I missed -- both positive and negative. After another day of use I am also learning new things that you can or can't do. One thing I don't like is the way SMS works. A list of your prior messages is available but I have not been able to figure out how to send another message to someone in the list without having to key in their name again. With regard to Safari it was pointed out to me that you can zoom the screen. You can either double-tap on the screen or use two fingers to touch and either pinch or reverse- pinch. If you want to see a "pinch" in action take a look here. The zoom is a very nice feature but I still find the browser to be quirky. I suspect it will be compared to the new Opera mini version 4 which is now in beta. All things considered after the first few days, I am still captivated by the iPhone. I am sure many more things will be learned in the days ahead. I especially look forward to seeing some new applications become available. One thing I suspect many people would like to see is a chat client. Meebo works through the browser but it is not really designed for mobile.
Back in January I said I couldn't wait to get an iPhone. Of course, I did wait, but not in line. The order was placed online the evening of June 29th and the confirming email said shipping would be within 2-4 weeks. Much to my surprise the iPhone left Shenzhen, China six days later and after Fedex stops in Anchorage, Indianapolis, Allentown, and Pittston the amazing logistics system dropped off the iPhone at the lakehouse the next day, Friday. From late that morning through the afternoon I was captivated.
I don't claim to a product reviewer but this posting will be my attempt to share reactions and opinions about the iPhone. The bottom line is a big "thumbs up" -- my expectations have been exceeded, especially with regard to the sleek look and feel and the ease of entering text on the flat screen.
The Phone. Activation of cell phones has generally gotten much easier than it used to be but for the iPhone with AT&T it was truly simple. I had already upgraded iTunes to the latest version which supports the iPhone. I placed the iPhone in the cradle and plugged the USB cable into the ThinkPad and followed the directions on the neatly laid out pages in iTunes. Within minutes I had a new mobile phone number and my contacts, emails accounts, and calendar had all been synchronized. My mother received the first call and the quality was crystal clear. One thing I don't like about the iPhone is the exclusive arrangement with AT&T. The iPhone has a SIM (Subscriber Identify Module) card but you can't take it out. Customers should have a choice to change from AT&T to T-Mobile or other GSM operators around the world and I hope Apple decides to open the iPhone to more operators over time. In spite of the AT&T lock-in and their slow network, I am pleasantly surprised by the coverage for both voice and data. (The Palm Treo 700P with Verizon gets no data coverage at places where I spend a lot of time. The phone features are a joy -- favorites list, call list, easily searchable contacts, large keypad, and simple voicemail setup and use. The speakerphone is very high quality. I have to say that so far I find it a really great phone and much easier to use than the Palm Treo, which had been my favorite of many phones I have tried over the years. The Palm has deeper functions, like details on each call in the call list showing date and length of call. Nice but can't say I have used that feature more than once or twice. The iPhone has the things you really need and the functionality is intuitive and easy to use.
WiFi. Over time the best feature of all may be the iPhone WiFi support. I have been writing here for years about the ubiquity of WiFi and it is truly happening -- JiWire is now listing 150,195 WiFi hotspots in 135 countries. The iPhone is not the first mobile device to offer WiFi but, once again, the simplicity of the implementation is simple to exploit. I keep my WAP SSID (the wireless access point service set ID)is private by turning off the broadcast "feature", so the signal was not visible. After turning WiFi "on" and entering the SSID and they WEP key, I pressed "Join" and in seconds I was connected. The iPhone automatically switches between the AT&T network and WiFi, if a signal is available. The iPhone remembers the WiFi connections you have made and automatically connects using your authentication data. With more and more WAPs out there WiFi will be used more and more with the obvious benefit of significantly faster speed.
SMS and email. SMS is very easy to use. It is integrated with your contact list. Just browsing through your contacts and a press on the mobile phone number and you are ready to send your text message. A favorites list is maintained for those with whom you message a lot. The email support is so simple that I wasn't sure it was working. Using the AT&T network or WiFi if available, email from all your accounts are retrieved every fifteen minutes. You can have the latest 25 or up to 200 at your fingertips. Scrolling through them is a breeze and you can set a large font to make them really easy to read. Some people prefer the Blackberry service but I have favored Palm for years -- until the iPhone. It is significantly easier to use. One drawback is that Thunderbird is not supported.
Browser. The Safari web browser is probably the weakest feature of the iPhone. The nice part is that if you just turn the iPhone sideways it changes the display to the wider view. Scrolling is a breeze and the .com button speeds up entering URLs. Bookmarks are synchronized through iTunes to the desktop version of Safari. You can choose to sync with Internet Explorer instead -- can not imagine why anyone would want to do that -- but there is no choice of syncing with Opera or Firefox. I found the adjustment of font size to be erratic -- sometimes works and sometimes not -- and most of the web sites I have visited on the iPhone are unreadable, including some sites that claim to be "m dot" mobile web sites. Maybe I will master how to do this. Safari, at this stage, is not nearly as good as Opera on mobile or desktop nor Firefox on the desktop. On the many mobile phones where it is available the Opera mobile browser is far better than Safari and Opera Mini works well on nearly any phone -- and "mini" does not require a $500 high-end phone. Most people don't spend a lot of time surfing the web with their phone but that is changing. When it comes to web browsing, the iPhone is a great step but it has a lot of catching up to do.
Entering text. A lot of the pre-launch speculation suggested that entering text without a keyboard would be very difficult. I have not found that to be the case. To the contrary, once you get the hang of it, it becomes quite easy. There are a lot of smarts built in that guess at what you trying to enter and if it gets it right you just tap the space bar and continue on. There are a number of shortcuts that speed things along. A picture is worth a thousand words so if you have doubts watch the video.
Video and Maps. Speaking of video, the iPhone has YouTube built in and if you are in range of a WiFi signal then watching movie clips (in the widescreen mode) is enjoyable. Google maps is also built in and just tapping the screen zooms in to what you want.
Photos. Most mobile phones can take pictures and display albums but, once again, the iPhone has made it really simple. Scrolling through your pictures with your finger is fun and turning the phone sideways gives you the widescreen view. Maybe the novelty will wear off but I am quite impressed. The camera doesn't have any options, like zooming, that I have found. Push one button to take a picture and one to see the pictures you have already taken. An animated shutter opens and closes. The pictures are 1,200 x 1,600. There is no flash, so low light situations will not produce good photos.
iPod. In some ways the iPod feature of the iPhone is better than the iPod itself. You can sync selected playlists and listen to music while you are surfing or checking email. The built in speaker phone is better than expected fidelity. It is amazing how people are complaining that the storage is "only" 8 gigabytes. Obviously the capacity will grow to 16, 32 and at some point a terabyte. I started out with 1,200 songs, a hundred pictures, 1,500 contacts, my calendar and email. 1,200 songs is plenty enough for me when I am mobile. I may end up reducing the number of songs and add more pictures. At home or traveling with the ThinkPad I can listen to the full library and albums. The limited storage and no removable storage card will be an issue for some but not for most.
Stocks and weather. In partnership with Yahoo! there are built-in stock and weather applications. You can easily add as many stocks and locations as you want and then scroll through them with a glide of your finger. You can select the time period for graphs of stock prices. If you click for more weather or stock information the browser opens and takes you directly to the right page at Yahoo! Stocks and weather are available on many mobile phones but the integration and simplicity on the iPhone is impressive.
Security. Even with "just" 8 gigabytes of information, there is always the worry of losing your mobile phone. The iPhone -- as an option -- lets you turn on a passcode feature and after a minute of idle time goes by you have to enter the 4 digit code to unlock the phone.
Applications. The strength of the Palm has always been the availability of a very large number of applications. the iPhone, at this stage, only has the ones that most people need, but it is clear that there will be many. By supporting mobile web standards in the desktop version of Safari, developers will be able to create applications which look and behave just like the applications built into the iPhone, and which can seamlessly access iPhone’s services, including making a phone call, sending an email and displaying a location in Google Maps. I would prefer a more open approach but it is clear that Apple and AT&T only want extend capabilities that they feel will not compromise reliability or security. The good news is that the iPhone is a wake-up call for mobile device makers and network operators. Hopefully they will respond and increase competition. I expect that within six months there will be a lot of new iPhone applications to choose from.
Synchronization. The word may be hackneyed but on the iPhone it is truly seamless. You get home or to the hotel and connect your iPhone to the ThinkPad, iTunes automatically starts if it isn't running and all your music, contacts, calendar, and photos are synchronized.
Settings. One feature I really like is that all the settings, options and preferences are in one place -- just tap the "Settings" button. On the Palm 700W with I found the complexity overwhelming at times and Windows Mobile unusable. Too many settings, options and preferences scattered across the various applications. The Palm OS is better but has the same basic problem. The iPhone has an operating system too, but it is transparent. Most people will not know or care about it because they don't have to. I have yet to "reboot" the iPhone. If things get really gummed up you can restore the phone to factory settings through iTunes and then re-sync your data.
Overall. Looks like Apple has hit a home run with the iPhone and raised the competitive bar quite a bit. In some ways there is nothing revolutionary -- except when it comes to holding it and using it. It is much more slender than I expected and it is a joy to use. While Microsoft is trying to take Windows to the mobile phone, Apple is trying to hide complexity and make the device simple and fun to use. After two days of use I am sold. Maybe I will get disappointed as I use it more. At this point I would say that within a week I will have a Palm Treo and an iPod for sale on eBay.
I started using spamarrest eleven months ago and all of my email goes through and mail that is not spam goes from there to my inbox. As of today spamarrest processed 50,129 inbound emails for me and 10,711 of them made it to my inbox. Spam represented 78.63% of the mail addressed to me. In other words only one in five emails were legitimate. Hormel Foods Corporation loves Spam. They say their SPAM Luncheon Meat is "the one in good taste". For the rest of us spam is something quite different and anything but in good taste.
There have been quite a few stories about spam here on patrickWeb. Early in the debate -- years ago -- I took the position that the elimination of spam could be handled by technology and that laws would not work. Even though the spammers have gotten more creative and we are currently seeing a rise in spam, I continue to believe technology is the best answer.
Around August 1 last year I started using spamarrest. All email addressed to john@patrickweb.com gets automatically picked up from my patrickWeb mail server by spamarrest and the spamarrest server then determines whether or not the mail gets forwarded to my patrickWeb inbox. For everyone in my contact list (1,400+ people), their email comes through to my inbox with only a second or so delay. However, if an email arrives for me from someone not in my contact list, an automatic reply is sent to them that says something like "Your email to John is pending delivery. Please click here to validate that you are a real person". When you click, you are presented with a web page where a word appears in a graphic image. Something simple like "cat" or "water". After you type in the word that appears you become validated as a real person -- not a robot sending millions of spam emails -- and you are added to the "ok" list just like everyone in my address book. Likewise, anyone that I send an email to for the first time is automatically added to the ok list. For anyone in the ok list their emails are never challenged -- and I answer all my email.
I had resisted challenge/response approaches in the past, but unfortunately today's environment forced me to make a change. I am really pleased with the results. No more spam or junk folders with daily trash emptying duties. The 79% of uncertain mail goes into an "unverified" folder. I check this folder on occasion if there is an email I am expecting. Spamarrest is very easy to manage. You can add entire domains to your ok list. For example, any email from someone at ibm.com comes through unchallenged. I have added a dozen or so other domains to the ok list. Occasionally a spammer or recruiter will respond and verify their email address but I then click to add them to the "not ok" list. The bottom line is that I spend significantly less time managing email than I did before and I can spend more time communicating with colleagues, family and friends old and new.
The week before switching to spamarrest, I received an email from a person I don't know who had read something of interest in my blog and wanted to give me some feedback. This is really valuable to me. I asked her what she thought of the challenge/response approach I was moving to. She said "I think that's a very good idea. People who are worth talking to, either personal or professional, will understand". From my perspective, I am really enjoying a 100% spam free world and yet still able to meet new people and learn from them.
Trondheim was a short flight from Oslo which we had reached by flying overnight from Newark, New Jersey. Unfortunately, our bags did not arrive until six hours later. In spite of rainy cool weather, we found Trondheim to be a delightful place to visit. I would highly recommend the The Palmehaven restaurant at the Britannia Hotel. Some attractions in were not open for the summer as of yet but if there is one thing to see in Trondheim it is the Ringve which houses Norway's National museum of music and musical instruments with collections from the whole world. The young tour guide not only gave clear explanations of each interior room from the 1880s in the Great House but she also sang or played an instrument in each room. There was a Mozart room, a Beethoven room, a Chopin room, and of course a Grieg room.
I had heard about Bergen, the second largest city in Norway, for years. It was once named one of Europe's 14 "secret capitals". In 2005 we took a flight there from Copenhagen but the weather was so bad that after circling the fjords for an hour we ended up landing a few hundred miles away in Oslo. We almost did not make it this time either. The Boeing 737 from Trondheim was hit by a lightning bolt! It was an electrifying expedience. It would be at least three hours before an engineer could make it from Oslo to inspect the plane and so we were re-routed an another flight to Oslo and then a final flight over to Bergen, at last. It was worth the wait. (See photo gallery).
They say that 900 year-old Bergen has its feet in the sea, its head in the skies and its heart in the right place. We were fortunate to leave the rain in Trondheim and find sunny warm weather in Bergen. The mountain top at Fløien is roughly 1,000 feet above the city. We hiked the three miles or so to get there. The view was excellent and so was the beer! We rode the funicular back down. Mediterranean food at Mezzo capped off the day.
Rather than fly to Oslo, our next destination, we decided to take advantage of Norway in a nutshell. The train/bus/ferry combo takes you through some of Norway's most beautiful fjord scenery.
The Bergen Railway took us to Voss where we then took a bus down the steep (1,000 feet elevation to sea level) amid spectacular hairpin bends of Stalheimskleiva -- 13 of them. If I had seen them in advance I would say that a bus could not navigate them and I certainly would not want to try them with a motorcycle. As the bus pulled out of Voss for Gudvangen, I noticed an Esso station -- gas was $7.63 per gallon. Along the country roads we saw brightly colored farm houses, with sheep grazing in the fields on both sides of the river with the snow covered mountains above.
The bus brought us to Gudvangen where we boarded a ferry for a two-hour cruise along the Aurlandsfjord and into the Naeroyfjord, the narrowest fjord in Europe, to Flåm. Next it was back on a train --The Flåm Railway. The climb up the 2,841 feet in elevation to Myrdal was spectacular as we saw constantly changing mountain scenery and giant cascading waterfalls. The train ride was only an hour but the trip was one of those things that you have to experience to believe. The Flåm Railway is the steepest normal-gauge train in Northern Europe. It was completed in 1940 after 20 years of construction. The purpose was to connect the Bergen-Oslo line to the giant Aurlandsfjorden. It is truly an engineering marvel.
The train from Myrdal to Oslo took 7 1/2 hours and the 11 PM dinner was late even by European standards. The next day was all business -- at Opera Software ASA. The company is doing some very exciting things in mobile and on the desktop. If you haven't yet tried "speed dial", I highly recommend downloading the new Opera 9.2. When you double-click next to tab, you get a speed-dial page with your top favorite web pages.
The last day we spent some time at the Nobel Peace Center and had lunch at Aker Brygge. If you like seafood and get to Oslo, don't miss the Solsiden Restaurant. I can say for sure it is the best seafood restaurant I have ever been to. After a comfortable ride on the Flytoget, it was an uneventful flight back home the next morning. Monday will be a business trip back over the Atlantic -- this time to Russia. More on that soon.
It was good to run into a lot of old friends in Orlando this week at the IBM Impact 2007 technology conference. I would have to say that it was a defining event. With 4,200 customers, IBM business partners, and IBMers attending there was obviously something really big happening. The Marriott Orlando World Center was buzzing with activity in every hall, ballroom, salon, patio, and restaurant.
The main subject of the conference was SOA. Only the most brilliant technical people could come up with SOA as a name for something. Let's see, is it safe operating area,
School of the Americas,
Skies of Arcadia (a Nintendo game), Society of Actuaries, state of the art, or the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act? Nope. Maybe it is about an architectural firm that has great customer service the architecture of a building that has a good service entrance? Neither. The SOA that brought thousands of people together in Orlando stands for "service oriented architecture". It is really important.
The wikipedia has a comprehensive definition of SOA but basically it is about a new way to get things done with software. Actually it is isn't new -- the idea has been around for decades -- but now it is really happening. It is so much a part of the vernacular at IBM that they just matter of factly call it "so a". After an IBM briefing about "virtualization" a year ago, I tried to explain the word in simple terms (see Virtually Real or Really Virtual). I'll try that approach here with SOA.
In a nutshell, SOA will allow web sites to do much more than “click here to buy”. In fact web sites built with SOA will result in us standing in fewer lines in the physical world and have to endure fewer telephone call centers that want to control us. Fulfillment models at our favorite retailer’s web site will result in the staple goods we need just showing up outside the garage door when we need them. If businesses have the right attitude, SOA will enable them to get closer to the ultimate Internet -- to build a people-oriented and user-friendly integrated experience for all parties involved - employees on the intranet, suppliers, customers, partners, analysts and prospective constituents. There is more to this story.
Over the last fifty years there has been an explosion of computer applications, but many of them were built in silos and were highly inflexible. In some cases companies thought decentralization was the answer so they allowed divisions and departments to do their own thing. The result was that many have a hodgepodge of incompatible systems that nobody is happy with. The web took things a big leap forward. At last there was a common way (the browser) for accessing and displaying information, even though the applications that run on the server -- that do the pricing, inventory lookups, shipping estimates, invoicing, etc. -- are still proprietary and usually tied to one particular IT vendor or system. The applications have also been very monolithic; i.e. in order to fulfill the expectations of customers on the web the application has to do the whole job. Soup to nuts; present the right price, confirm if the item is in stock, calculate shipping, and confirm the status of the order. Increasingly, customers want to get access directly into the supply chain and see exactly where their order stands. In short, applications have gotten larger and more complicated -- harder, not easier.
SOA -- arguably the biggest change in information technology in decades -- is poised to change the way applications are created and how they interoperate. Instead of building a monolithic application that takes a customer order, does credit checks, checks inventory, looks through the supply chain, arranges for payment, charges the customer, clears credit card transactions, etc., with SOA these various functions are built as separate "pieces". Think Legos. The individual programs are called "services" and they are called upon as needed. A sales tax calculation "service", for example, could be used by many different divisions of a company thereby eliminating redundancy. IBM has been practicing what it preaches in this regard. It has reduced the number of programs it uses to run the company from 16,000 to a mere 4,000.
The SOA services do not all have to be developed or acquired internally. Thanks to the Internet, services can be "rented" from others. For example, suppose that a company called American Specialties Inc. (ASI) specializes in selling American goods for delivery mostly outside of America. They want to create an application to sell their products on the web. The trickiest part of the application is determining the best way to ship the product to ensure it gets there when the customer wants it and at the lowest cost. ASI doesn't’t have the skills to write this particular part of the application and they haven’t bee able to find a vendor with a software package that can do it and which is compatible with the rest of ASI’s software.
It turns out that there is another company called Rates and Costs Inc. (RCI), which specializes in the calculation of optimum routes and the associated costs for shipment to places anywhere in the world. RCI offers the calculation as a service on the web and it is the exact function ASI needs to incorporate into their web application. Since RCI follows the SOA standards, ASI is able to see the specifications for RCI’s service – what inputs are required and what output does it produce. RCI could have created their calculation service using any IT platform they choose -- the standards assure that things can work together.
The programmer at ASI likes RCI’s program because it performs exactly the right function that ASI needs and the software has already been written and tested! ASI follows the SOA standards to incorporate RCI’s service into their web application. Whenever a user goes to ASI’s web page and needs shipment route and cost information, a link is made behind the scenes to RCI’s web server to get the information. ASI’s customers don’t know, nor will they care, that part of the job is being done by RCI’s server; not ASI’s server. ASI makes an arrangement to pay RCI each time one of ASI’s customers uses the RCI web service.
Creating programs by linking to other programs without regard to what programming language was used to create the others’ programs represents a whole new paradigm. It is one of the information technology industry’s holy grails. Standards organizations, such as Oasis, have been attempting for years to create a “neutral” programming environment. The UNIX vendors – HP, DEC, Sun, IBM, Data General, and others – formed various organizations, councils and consortia over the years attempting to bring things together. Progress was made but none of these initiatives achieved real openness and true compatibility across the information technology industry -- until SOA. It is not really new but it is time. Open Internet standards and SOA tools are making it happen.
SOA will make it possible for the web to evolve from a web of content to a web of content and applications. SOA will enable server-to-server interaction in addition to browser to server interactions. Servers will negotiate with other servers and even complete transactions by themselves with no direct human intervention. These interactions will replace the paper forms and faxes that flow back and forth from company to company today.
E-business evolved to on demand. At this stage many enterprises have bought in to the concept but are struggling with how to get there. This is why many web sites don't fully meet our needs -- they are dependent on many independent applications that the enterprise has had for decades and so far have been unable to integrate them. SOA is the new model -- it offers the first comprehensive, standards based way to get the job done. Adoption of SOA will enable the interoperability within the many functions and departments of enterprises and between enterprises that has been a decades long dream. History has shown that adoption of standards leads to an explosion of usage and that will surely be the case with SOA. The SOA standards will enable entire industries to be brought together. Virtual corporations comprised of a federation of smaller ones will enable “hyper competition” on a global scale.
How does "Web 2.0" fit into all this? Like a ball and glove. Quite the hot topic in tech circles and among venture capitalists, Web 2.0 is basically a style, a model, an approach, and a philosophy wrapped together. It includes a "lightweight" programming model that is more like webpage development than traditional programming. A key element of 2.0 is the blog feed -- a way to allow people to look at a web page but also subscribe to it. Another element is AJAX, a technique built on a collection of Internet standards that produces a rich user experience -- kayak.com is a good example -- with pages that don't "reload", they just change while you are looking at them. Another characteristic of Web 2.0 is that it is a perpetual beta -- users treated as co-developers. The philosophy is "release early and release often". One final element that I consider part of 2.0 is the PHP scripting language. Some professionals have considered it "rinky-dink" but IBM is taking it quite seriously. Jerry Cuomo, IBM Fellow and CTO for IBM WebSphere, said PHP has widespread skills, an active community, viral marketing, and growing deployments.
All things considered, IBM really has it's act together with regard to SOA. Every software and services executive is well versed on it and has it baked into their business and development plans. The promise is great and with tens of thousands of software engineers and management support I think it is fair to expect IBM to deliver. They have already made dozens of acquisitions to fill in the white spaces in their vision. Major customers are signing up and getting results. Much more at ibm.com, including tips and techniques, customer testimonials, and business partners.
Visiting China is an eye opener culturally and economically. It is a rapidly developing country and it appears that special interest groups do not get in the way of progress. Perhaps it was the same way when America was building the Hoover Dam or the Interstate Highway system. I was quite impressed with aviation in China. We took five flights within the country. Not sure how many airlines they have in total -- the Air Travel Guide for China lists seven. The ones we used all had new aircraft, they took off and landed on time, and the flight attendants were young, friendly and efficient. You had the feeling they really cared about your comfort. While U.S. airlines have eliminated pillows and blankets in economy seating, the Chinese airlines seemed to have an unlimited supply. Every flight, even if 45 minutes, had food. Check-in and security lines moved efficiently even though the airports and the number of people in them were huge. There are various claims made about airports but I don't think there is any debate that Beijing will soon be the largest -- and take just three years to complete.
In the U.S., we are very fortunate to have
a transportation system that is highly reliable and gets us to where we want
to go in an amazingly short time. The travel industry is a complex one and there
is a huge legacy of process, management systems, and technology that makes
it difficult to be as flexible and nimble as we all would like. The Chinese do not have all the legacy baggage -- no pun intended. Having offered
that perspective, it is still at times incredible what we put up with.
The return flight from Beijing actually pulled away from the gate twenty minutes early, took off right on time, and landed at Newark Liberty International Airport exactly on schedule. After the plane sat on the tarmac for a few minutes, the captain announced that there would be a hold while they
"waited for a gate assignment". The few minutes turned out to be ninety minutes. Someone knew for at least twelve hours when the flight
would land yet there was no assigned place for it to go after landing. Apparently there was a mechanical problem with one of the planes that was occupying the space assigned to our plane. Since it was an international flight the plane needed to go to a certain terminal. Could we have been placed on a bus and be taken to that terminal? Newark is a very large airport and you would think there would be some way to park the plane and get the passengers to immigration. Could the problem have been an information problem? Could
it be that that the flight arrival system and the gate scheduling system do
not communicate?
Being a pilot myself, I feel confident in the men and
women in the cockpit of an airline aircraft. Knowing a bit about the FAA regulations, I feel confident in the procedures for flying and safety
inspections. When it comes to information oriented aspects of the airline industry
I am much less confident. The lack of systems and applications integration becomes so
painfully obvious. At times a plane gets to the gate on time but there is no one there to open the door. Another information
breakdown? Perhaps the person was overworked and busy managing another flight
but you certainly get the feeling that better information flow
could make the airplane and people "flows" work better.
Japan Airlines
has been using message queuing technology for more than ten years to enable their flight arrival system and their
gate scheduling system to communicate. Message queuing technology can enable
two (or more) incompatible systems to exchange messages so that
things can be coordinated. Today's Service Oriented Architecture makes it much easier than ten years ago and it is very hard to justify having systems that don't communicate with each other (or a solid plan to get there).
I am sure many people could top the tarmac story from Newark but I doubt if anyone could top the Fire
Truck incident though!
Epilogue to the epilogue: If you are interested in tracking flights, airplanes, or activities at airports, take a look at http://flightaware.com/
It was time for patrickWeb to get a new home. The original site -- ibm.com/patrick -- was setup in 1995 and IBM has been kind enough to continue to maintain the link. Then, after e-tirement at the end of 2001, I setup patrickWeb. For the first year I rented some server space in New York and then in 2003 moved patrickWeb over to Interland which was subsequently acquired and became Peer1. The dedicated IBM server at Peer1 in Miami has been very good for the past four years but managing it has become a bit complex and time consuming. With all the bad guys out there trying to hack into anything and everything there is a need for near constant surveillance -- even with all the automated tools. I decided that having a shared server with constant and professional monitoring was better than having a dedicated server with part time security inspections. patrickWeb's new home is at DreamHost.
DreamHost is an employee owned company. They seem to have a passion for providing solid web hosting at a very affordable price. For $7.95 per month you get more capacity than I can imagine using. They have no telephone support but the combination of a really good interface to their hosting environment plus a good Knowledgebase and normally responsive email support makes me feel confident. One thing I like is their status page where you can always see what is going on. Adding and managing databases is a piece of cake and Dreamhost includes full backup "snapshots" of your data at various regular intervals -- hourly, daily, and weekly.
Last weekend I bit the bullet and began the move of patrickWeb and other sites and related email that I manage over to Dreamhost. I changed the DNS servers at Network Solutions to point to the Dreamhost servers in Los Angeles instead of the Peer1 server in Miami. The change propagated through the Internet in a roughly a day and most everything works. There are a few glitches on patrickWeb that I haven't figured out yet. If you see some pages on the site that have a missing menu, that is one of the issues I am working on. Feedback on broken things is always welcome.
The cost, speed, and reliability of DreamHost is just one more reminder of how much the Internet is being woven into our lives. Not that long ago it was necessary to get a CD and install software on your PC to be enabled to utilize an application. Now you can get almost any application online. In the early days of dial-up modem connections to the Internet it wasn't practical to depend on the Net for applications. With "always-on" connections, high speed, dramatically low cost storage, and impressive new Web 2.0 interfaces (such as kayak.com), the Internet is really becoming the computer. The next phase is surely going to move that capability to our handheld and mobile devices. The Nintendo Wii with WiFi and the Opera browser offers a glimpse of the future that is right in front of us.
Hormel Foods Corporation loves Spam. They say their SPAM Luncheon Meat is "the one in good taste". For the rest of us spam is something quite different and anything but in good taste. There have been quite a few stories about spam here on patrickWeb. Early in the debate -- years ago -- I took the position that the elimination of spam could be handled by technology and that laws would not work. Even though the spammers have gotten more creative and we are currently seeing a rise in spam, I continue to believe technology is the best answer.
Around August 1 I started using spamarrest. All email addressed to john@patrickweb.com gets automatically picked up from my mail server by spamarrest. For everyone in my contact list (2,800+ people), their email comes through to my inbox with no problem. However, if an email arrives for me from someone not in my contact list, an automatic reply is sent to them that says something like "Your email to John is pending delivery. Please click here to validate that you are a real person". When you click, you are presented with a web page where a word appears in a graphic image. Something simple like "cat" or "water". After you type in the word that appears you become validated as a real person -- not a robot sending millions of spam emails -- and you are added to the "ok" list just like everyone in my address book. Likewise, anyone that I send an email to for the first time is automatically added to the ok list. For anyone in the ok list their emails are never challenged -- and I answer all my email.
I had resisted challenge/response approaches in the past, but unfortunately today's environment forced me to make a change. I am really pleased with the results. No more spam or junk folders and daily trash emptying duties. Since August spamarrest has processed 17,433 emails addressed to me. The 4,261 legitimate emails were forwarded to me. The remaining 75.6% of them went into an "unverified" folder. I check this folder on occasion if there is an email I am expecting. Spamarrest is very easy to manage. You can add entire domains to your ok list. For example, any email from someone at ibm.com comes through unchallenged. I have added a dozen or so other domains to the ok list. Occasionally a spammer or recruiter will respond and verify their email address but I then click to add them to the "not ok" list. The bottom line is that I spend significantly less time managing email than I did before and I can spend more time communicating with colleagues, family and friends old and new.
The week before switching to spamarrest, I received an email from a person I don't know who had read something of interest in my blog and wanted to give me some feedback. This is really valuable to me. I asked her what she thought of the challenge/response approach I was considering. She said "I think that's a very good idea. People who are worth talking to, either personal or professional, will understand". From my perspective, I am really enjoying a 100% spam free world and yet still able to meet new people and learn from them.
According to the wiktionary, a "proxy" is an agent or substitute authorized to act for another person. You can find many variations on this theme in the wikipedia. If you belong to a club or association that is having a vote on something at a meeting which you are not able to attend, you can give your proxy to a friend or neighbor to vote for you. In the old days of Europe, a monarch could be married to someone by proxy -- without the bride being present. In trading card games, a substitute card used can be used when a player does not own the substituted card.
As you would expect, the proxy has found it's way into the world wide web. A "proxy server" allows a user to make indirect network connections to other network services. For example, if you have a mobile phone -- who doesn't -- you can use Opera Mini to surf the web. Top of the line "smart" phones such as the Palm Treo, have a browser included but the vast majority of mobile phones are not robust enough to include a browser. Opera Mini has changed that. It works using a proxy server. Opera mini looks like a browser, works like a browser (and a very good one) but when you make a request for www.whatever.com, Opera mini actually sends that request to a server in Norway and your desired web page appears on your phone.
The ultimate proxy server may be Psiphon (pronounced “SY-fon”) which is going to become available this Friday. Some countries have become very restrictive and implemented censorship to prevent citizens from accessing certain web sites. The wikipedia, for example, provides the scoop on many subjects that these countries would rather their citizens did not know much about. Universal access to blogs is a clear threat in certain countries. The idea with Psiphon is that people in an uncensored country download a program to their PC which becomes a proxy for people in a restricted-access country. A relative in a far away country enters a web site address and the browser takes them to the PC of a relative in the U.S. or elsewhere which in turn retrieves the desired web page and delivers it in the browser of their relative in the censoring country. According to the New York Times story this morning, the program’s designers say there is no evidence on the user’s computer of having viewed censored material -- after they erase their Internet history after each use, which is easy to do. This is just one more example of how the Internet has provided "power to the people".
Note: I would provide a link to the NYT story but they require registration in order to read their content. Their day will come.
The title may sound presumptuous since I am not an advertising
expert. However, from a consumer point of view, I suspect my views may be shared
by many of my friends, colleagues, and readers. Let's start with television
and then consider the web. There are very big differences.
The convergence of the PC and TV has been exaggerated -- so far.
Yes, there are some interesting ways to watch TV on
your PC or surf the web on your TV but, at least for the immediate future, the PC
is something we use at our desk or lap and the TV is more
of an entertainment center. (Note: when not in the home, the handheld will be come dominant -- that is another story). High definition TV is great for enjoying a DVD or
a HD broadcast. The PC is the place I go to do email, do some research, make
purchases, read or write, and read the news. Isn't the TV our main for source for news? Increasingly not.
On days that I am not traveling to board meetings or conferences, I like to exercise. The recumbent bike and elliptical cross-trainer make good perches from which to watch cable TV news. If I am not watching a previously recorded news program -- and I do record several per day -- it is hard to get any news. The official data will show somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes per hour as being advertising. During the day it is closer to 20. That means one out of three minutes is advertising. You can flip between a half dozen news shows and find no news. If you subtract the news channel self-promotions, details on the latest deranged family member who has done something horrible, tabloid stories, and news about the news, then what you have left is a small fraction of an hour -- some critics say slightly less than five minutes per hour of real news. Some people say CNN means "contains no news" and that when FOX says "your station for news" they really mean "your station for advertising". For years, Netflix has been my way to watch movies, but the other night I was watching a movie where there was no digital video recorder or DVD player. The movie was interrupted every ten minutes with 10-12 advertisements.
The advertisements are mostly insulting to one's intelligence. There are no insights into anything and they grate
on people's nerves. Honestly, I have to say that most of the ads are obnoxious --
as bad as spam. The shotgun blast ads aren't fraudulent but they add no value to our
lives. Zero. Do we need broadcast television to tell us the latest interest rate at ditech.com or to be reminded four times per hour that Scottrade is "all
about value" or to be constantly told to ask our doctor about this pill or that pill?
The bottom line is that most of us don't rely on the TV as a source of ideas
for things we need. There may be some people that actually enjoy advertisements.
That is ok, but the rest of us want to "opt out".
Digital video recorders such as TiVo are a step in the right direction. If you want to watch a 7:00 PM news program, you can record it and then start watching it at 7:20 and not miss a thing. When it comes to movies, some people say they use the ads for biological and nourishment breaks, but do we need that every ten minutes? Yes, the premium cable movie channels are expensive, but millions of people would rather pay the monthly fee and be able to watch a movie from beginning to end without irrelevant ads droning at them. The most watched TV show ever is "The Sopranos". I am not commenting on the content
of the program -- just on the business model. Although it's available in only
a third of American homes, approximately 10 million viewers per week actually
paid to watch it. There was no advertising. This is why the percentage of
time people spend in front of TV's watching DVD's and subscription based programming
will continue to climb.
Meanwhile the Internet is giving us what we want -- control over what we watch and when we watch it. Youtube is the tip of the iceberg. Search based advertising is booming because it is relevant to what we are searching for. It puts us in control. I have been using Weather Underground (the first Internet weather service) since 1995. The thing I like the most is that members -- at a cost of $10 per year -- get no ads. No banners, dancing bears, flashing action bars, or pop-ups that cover the weather. A weather site that has just weather. What a concept. When it comes to news, my source for years has been Google News. The headlines are based on what people are reading. Sometimes a top story is from the New York Times, sometimes it is from Al Jazeera, or a newspaper site in Houston, Philadelphia, or many other places. I feel like I am getting a wide variety of coverage and opinions and not just what the "local" paper has to say.
The Internet has always been about "Power to the People" and the people are sending lots of signals about advertising. They don't like it. They want "options, preferences, no ads" built into their viewing experience. Meanwhile, content executives are looking for even more ways to get in our face, send text messages to our mobile phones, and get into our instant messages and blogs. They have the future of advertising all wrong. Companies have to market their goods and services, but the model has to change. Sponsoring sports events and getting products used by actors in movies are fine but most important is to build great web sites and customer support that surpass our expectations. That is where the investments should be made. The result will be that bloggers and good old fashioned word of mouth will spread the word about how great the company is. Companies that continue to spam us with their ads are going to get a very bad reputation and the media companies that run them are going to lose their readers and viewers.
There have been several stories here about alphaWorks. Today is a special day as IBM celebrates the tenth anniversary of the program. It was an honor for me to be part of the event in San Francisco. I made some remarks today about why and how alphaWorks was created but I decided to go further here and republish part of a chapter of my book, Net Attitude, where I gave some background on what alphaWorks is all about. It was part of a bigger subject called "Organizing to get things done". Today we might call it collaborative innovation.
From Net Attitude (Perseus Publishing), November 2001
The most important ingredients to accomplishing great things as an e-business are to find, attract, recruit, hire, motivate, and retain really great people. Every year the crop of students gets better so you have to continually raise the bar -- look at every movement of staff and ask yourself if you are improving your hand. Everyone has to not only bring
something to the table but bring unique value to the overall equation.
When
things are working right the whole organization breeds and feeds on itself.
If the caliber of your team is high, there's a much greater likelihood of being able to attract additional high caliber people. Once you have them it is critical to nurture and support Net Attitude and to have creative programs to take advantage of their skills.
Every CEO I spoke to during the 1990'2 wanted to know how to make e-business web projects go faster. Every CIO I have met worries about e-business web projects going too fast. The CIO has spent decades getting information technology under control and making it reliable. Fast moving projects are sometimes in conflict with that goal. The solution to the dilemma is multifaceted but one key element is to have a "Skunk Works" where rapid prototyping is the modus operandi.
There have been quite a few stories about spam here on patrickWeb. Early in the debate -- years ago -- I took the position that the elimination of spam could be handled by technology and that laws would not work. I testified in Washington on that point and urged congressmen to resist the temptation to regulate the Internet. I still feel that way. The "do not call" legislation is a good example of good intentions that end up with a lot of exceptions and the result is we still get many calls at home that wed don't want.
Since September 2002 I have been using a technology from Cloudmark that has done a superb job. It looks at each email with some fancy algorithms and compares it to a database and with information that others have reported. If it is likely spam, the email gets put in a junk folder. The accuracy is excellent. I can't remember a case in the last four years where someone has sent me an email that was incorrectly identified as spam, and until recently, it has caught nearly all the emails that are spam. Until recently. The spammers have gotten more clever and devious. Of the 200 or so emails I receive daily, roughly 80% are spam. Of the 80%, Cloudmark used to get 99% of them but that percentage is declining. Also, I have the burden of seeing the garbage come in and also of having to empty the trash on occasion to avoid clogging up my ThinkPad. It has become time for a new approach.
When I was last in Washington, one of the FTC commissioners was advocating the idea that software makers and online service companies modify their email programs so that any email that comes from someone that is not already in your contact list or address book be treated as spam and put in the junk folder or deleted. I feel this is an extreme approach. I have met a lot of people over the years through email. I don't want to reject someone just because I don't already know them. A company called Spam Arrest has developed a really good alternative.
With spamarrest -- which I started using this week -- all of my email is redirected to spamarrest.com automatically. For everyone in my contact list (2,800+ people), their email goes through as normal. They see no difference, nor do I. If an email arrives for me at spamarrest from someone not in my contact list, an automatic reply is sent to them that says something like "Your email to John is pending delivery. Please click here to validate that you are a real person". When you click, you are presented with a web page where a word appears in a graphic image. Something simple like "cat" or "water". After you type in the word that appears you become validated as a real person -- not a robot sending millions of spam emails -- and you are added to the "ok" list just like everyone in my address book. Likewise, anyone that I send an email to for the first time is automatically added to the list.
I have resisted these challenge/response approaches in the past, but unfortunately today's environment forced me to do it. I am really pleased with the results. No more spam or junk folders and no trash emptying duties. The week before switching to spamarrest, I received an email from a person I don't know who had read something of interest in my blog and wanted to give me some feedback. This is really valuable to me. I asked her what she thought of the challenge/response approach I was considering. She said "I think that's a very good idea. People who are worth talking to, either personal or professional, will understand". From my perspective, I am really enjoying a 100% spam free world.
This week I attended an IBM software technology briefing about SOA. Only brilliant technical people could come up with SOA as a name for something. Let's see, is it safe operating area,
School of the Americas,
Skies of Arcadia (a Nintendo game), Society of Actuaries, state of the art, or the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act? Nope. Maybe it is about an architectural firm that has great customer service? Or maybe it is about the architecture of a building that has a good service entrance? Neither. The SOA of the briefing stands for "service oriented architecture". It is really important. The wikipedia has a comprehensive definition of SOA but basically it is about a new way to get things done with software. Actually it is isn't new -- the idea has been around for decades -- but now it is really happening. It is so much a part of the vernacular at IBM that they just matter of factly call it "so a". After an IBM briefing about "virtualization" a year ago, I tried to explain the word in simple terms (see Virtually Real or Really Virtual). I'll try that approach here with SOA.
In a nutshell, SOA will allow web sites to do much more than “click here to buy”. In fact web sites built with SOA will result in us standing in fewer lines in the physical world and have to endure fewer telephone call centers that want to control us. Fulfillment models at our favorite retailer’s web site will result in the staple goods we need just showing up outside the garage door when we need them. If businesses have the right attitude, SOA will enable them to get closer to the ultimate Internet -- to build a people-oriented and user-friendly integrated experience for all parties involved - employees on the intranet, suppliers, customers, partners, analysts and prospective constituents. There is more to this story. (read more)
Technology writer, Peter Svensson, wrote an interesting story called "Will video break the Internet?". From a technical point of view there are many factors to consider. If a large number of web "surfers" were using the Internet as their primary way to watch TV, there would be a problem. More capacity is clearly needed, especially as HD-TV becomes more prevalent. The pessimists -- and some telecommunications operators -- see rising fees to pay for the bandwidth expansion. Optimists know that various technologies such as multicasting, caching, digital video recorders, etc. are dramatically improving the Net's ability to deliver video content and in parallel the cost per unit of technology continues to decline. History would suggest the optimistic view is the right one.
During the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta there was a bomb blast. Native Atlanta ex-patriots living in Japan and Germany and other parts of the world wanted to get as much news coverage as possible about the status but had few choices (there were no blogs then). The Internet Technology team at IBM in Southbury, Connecticut was running a large web infrastructure for the Games at the time and one of the engineers, Andy Stanford-Clark, got the idea to "stream" a local Atlanta radio station over the Internet using an IBM technology called Bamba. It was a very successful project but only a handful of people could listen simultaneously due to the limitations of the technology and the Internet. Some people thought that if there were large numbers of listeners "audio would break the Internet". Today millions of people consider audio over the Net as commonplace. (Listening to crystal clear classical music from KUSC-FM in Los Angeles through my Sqeezebox as I write this). Based on the tens of millions of daily visitors to YouTube, it is clear that video has also become commonplace. Another leading indicator is what is happening on campus. A number of universities have decided to use the Internet to deliver cable TV to their dormitories.
One of the issues Mr. Svensson raised in his story is "net neutrality", a term that means different things to different people. The fear is that the really large telecommunications companies that provide parts of the "backbone" of the Internet may decide to not only raise fees but also to be discriminatory. In the extreme it would mean that Verizon would block access to Google because they made a deal with Yahoo! or visa versa. The telcos have never been successful in getting into the content business so a new angle for them might be to make deals with content providers that would make their video move through the Internet backbone at a higher priority in return for fees. These fears have gotten the attention of lawmakers who are now talking about legislation to insure net neutrality. Legislation is the worst possible way to address the issue.
What is really needed is more competition. In Japan, the Internet service available to consumers is significantly faster than in the U.S. and significantly less expensive. For example, Yahoo! Broadband offers 8 million bits per second for about $20 per month. Up to 100 million bits per second is available. What technical breakthrough have they had? None. The breakthrough was to separate the various infrastructure elements of Internet service and allow "Adam Smith's invisible hand" to go to work. More competition means higher speeds and lower prices. In the U.S. we have legions of lawyers and lobbyists at work doing their best to gain protections for themselves and to slow the spread of innovation such as municipal wireless and voice over IP. Will video break the Internet? No. The biggest threat to freedom of choice for content at competitive prices is a lack of competition.
Misguided or overly-prescriptive legislation can have unintended consequences. It can often fix one problem and create two new ones or add yet another layer of protectionism. Mike Nelson, former Director for Technology Policy at the Federal Communications Commission (and former colleague at IBM), says "a lack of competition which lets companies exert monopoly or duopoly power is probably the biggest damper on innovation". Not all legislation is bad. It is possible to use it to increase competition and decrease regulation, to fund e-government pilot projects, "connect the unconnected," or fund university education and research.
There are some pictures from the New Orleans trip at flickr. Red Herring ran a story called Net 2016: The Web 10 Years After in which a number of us were quoted. See in the news. If you haven't tried Pandora, I highly recommend it. Story to follow.
The final afternoon of the Business Leadership Forum focused on the big picture -- of both global political factors and technology. A panel included Karl-Heinz Grasser, Federal Minister of Finance for the Republic of Austria. He spoke about how governments can not only avoid being an obstacle to innovation and growth but also encourage competition thereby creating more jobs.
The panel was bullish about how the information revolution -- ushered in by the microprocessor in the early 1970's and the Internet of the 1990's -- has led to an explosion of new products
and new business models, However, there was a consensus that retaliation from poor economies and over-regulation by some countries could stymie the growth.
Mario Monti, President of Bocconi University and commissioner in the European Union for ten years, was quite optimistic about the EU -- a market of 480 million people -- and said that the EU itself is an innovation. He said that Europe is much more like the U.S. than it was. It is now a single market, has a single currency, and has been expanding market reach around the world. The shortcoming is that Europe, unlike America, does not yet have a constitution. This results in an economic disadvantage because the European community can not make a decision for the total. The European economy is not innovating quickly enough and in fact some countries are protecting the past at the expense of the future. Mario says it is time for "naming and shaming" the laggards through peer reviews. Then he got more specific -- "Germany, France, and Italy are behind on liberalization of service markets and have resisted initiatives to increase competition". These three countries will have a negative impact on the Euro which in turn will hurt the rest of Europe. Mr. Monti's presentation was sobering but hopeful. He said the EU has a lot of good features, that it can protect intellectual property but also move against monopolies such as Microsoft. The key to get innovation going in Europe is for the EU to innovate itself by completing it's constitution.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger kicked off the final segment of the forum, which focused on the future.
IBM supports Linux because it is a great operating system for computers. Irving introduced Linus Torvalds the developer of Linux which he published as a student in 1991. Don Tapscott, a widely acclaimed author, who invented the term "paradigm shift", then moderated the final panel which included Linus,
Nick Donofrio, executive vice president for innovation and technology at IBM, and Ann Mettler, executive director and co-founder of The Lisbon Council. It was a wide-ranging discussion. Linus is an incredibly humble guy. He said he has no vision, just looks 5 cm ahead before each step, and loves to solve technical problems. Linux is successful, he says, because both the development and the decision making are distributed -- a "built-in meritocracy". Don asked why volunteers worked on Linux for no economic return. Linus said, "if you were all engineers, you would not be asking that question". Open source software is viable in most all software areas, with the only exception being niche markets which are too small to get adequate collaboration. "Open source will take over most all infrastructure".
Ann said there is a huge gap between businesses which are moving ahead rapidly and societies which feel left behind. The key problem is that the economy is 70% services but the regulations and governance are still based on an industrial model. She believes that government should learn how to innovate from businesses. "Politicians are clueless about the discussion of the past day and a half". She says that businesses need to share their leanings with society. The labor market in Europe is flat because companies do not want to hire and that is because the laws are so onerous. "You can hire but you can't fire". Labor reform is needed desperately.
Nick says' It' s all about change". IBM is doing a balancing act by supporting both open things and proprietary things. The company is generating a lot of patents but also giving away a lot of patents to move the ball forward in key markets such as healthcare and education. "The world can move ahead faster if the OS is Linux -- it is good enough and a "blow for freedom". A California venture capitalist asked about business ethics and Nick was very aggressive in his response saying it was not optional for companies to be totally and completely ethical in every respect. (Having been at IBM for 38 years, I can say I never ever had a concern about ethics at the company). Nick summarized that anyone can innovate if they are willing to change. "If nothing changes, nothing changes".
Sam wrapped up the conference by saying corporations need to be transparent. Their ultimate responsibility is to create value for the constituencies: stockholders, customers, employees.
He walks the talk.
IBM had some demonstrations set up in the breakout areas at the Auditorium Parco della staffed by researchers and experts in various areas. There was a lot of interest during coffee breaks. After lunch before the final session of the forum got started I had interview with Chris Barger from IBM to talk about the demonstrations and also a few thoughts on the future of healthcare and the Internet. Here is the transcript and here is the podcast.
There wasn't time during the two and a half hour drive from Denver to Laramie, Wyoming to look for some of the many geocaches and benchmarks, but we did take an hour to find two interesting geocaches in Laramie.
The first cache is associated with "Welcome to Laramie" and is located at 41.3 degrees north and 105.54 degrees west.
Exactly due east from home but 32 degrees further west and more than a mile higher in elevation.
The second cache -- StarBrand's Rhyme Time #2 -- was different than any I have seen so far. It was hidden in a tupperware container under a log out in a field.
On a sheet of paper were listed 100 words. In order to count the cache as a "find" you have to pick a word and write a four line poem with at least two rhymes with the word you selected. Since we were there for one of our son's graduations from Wyotech, the poem was easy to compose....
We came for our son's graduation
Mom and Dad are filled with elation
The ceremony was quite a creation
The students received an ovation
We had a fear this day would not be near
Now we're here shedding a tear
From Wyoming, it was back to Denver for a flight to Las Vegas to participate in the Stratus Technologies Conference.
Staying at the Venetian was tough duty but somebody had to do it. Not being good gamblers, we found three very interesting virtual caches. A virtual cache is one where you go to a specified latitude and longitude and observe something and then send an email to the cache owner or post a picture to validate that you had actually found the cache. In some cases you have to report certain information that you would only know if you had actually been there. The first one was a commemorative plaque that had to be reported. At the second one a pose by a statue was required. The third one was most difficult to find and there were three questions that had to be answered and reported to the cache owner. Aside from the educational aspect of this cache, the surrounding scenery and wildlife made the walk worthwhile.
On Monday morning I gave a speech at the conference for 500 people and talked about the key trends I see with the future of the Internet. In the afternoon I participated in an executive roundtable to drill a bit deeper into the issues. My theme is still that we are only 5% of the way into what the Internet has in store for our business and personal lives. As for geocaches and benchmarks, the 84 I have found so far are less than one one-hundredth of a percent of those that are out there.
Wired Magazine has been a pleasure to read for more than ten years (published in San Francisco, California since March 1993). Each issue that arrives becomes part of the "read" file for the next airplane ride. I find the magazine provocative and insightful. Increasingly over recent years it has become movie and game oriented and although I am not a gamer or video fan, it is good to stay on top of where things are going with the younger generation. (Note: I am told the average gamer is now more than 30 years old).
The current issue of Wired includes an interview (sponsored by Lexus) by Charlie Rose with Eric Schmidt (CEO at Google), Ivan Seidenberg (CEO at Verizon), Michael Eisner (CEO at Disney), and film director George Clooney. The piece was obviously an advertorial and contained a lot of self-serving comments, but nevertheless, I found it very interesting and prescient.
It was surprising that Clooney, Eisner, and Seidenberg mentioned the Internet more than Eric Schmidt did. It was not that long ago that Hollywood and Telco were in denial about the Net. Eisner talked about billions of people downloading movies in minutes and said that the industry would see a lot of "bubbles breaking" but that in 5-10 years the music, movie, and television industry would be "unbelievably strong". Clooney said he thinks people will still go to theatres because they are an "event" but the content will be 100% digital with movies instantly downloaded into 300 theaters across the country.
Eric Schmidt was very consistent with the Google vision to organize the world's information. He said that all their best ideas come from the "spend 20% of your time to work on whatever you want to" employment policy. He also said that only 1-2% of the U.S. half-trillion dollar advertising spending was on the Internet -- obviously leaving a lot of upside for Google. Seidenberg wants to wire the country with fiber optic cable to every home and offer tens of megabits for multiple HDTV's, telephony, and Internet service.
The good news for the rest of us, as long as the lobbyists don't get in the way, is that there is going to be a lot of competition in every aspect of what the interviewees discussed. The result should be faster speeds and lower prices. The bad news is that we may have to put up with old-fashioned shotgun style advertising for a while and meanwhile there are a lot of startup companies investing heavily in new advertising techniques to identify us, target us, and blast advertising to every form of communication that we engage. Fortunately, there are also companies working on methods to preserve our privacy and protect us from being harassed.
The central theme at the IBM Open Source IT Analyst Conference in Stamford, Connecticut this week revolved around the word "open". The term is used with "open source" and also with "open standards" and there is often confusion about the meaning of the two terms. A standard is like a blueprint. An open standard is one that is freely available. Open source is software that is freely available and which may implement open standards. The two terms are independent.
At one extreme, open means you can take my idea and do whatever you want with it and you don't even have to tell me you did so. At the other extreme, closed means my idea is mine and you can not use it or even see it. In a practical sense there is a wide spectrum in between open and closed. There are many factors in the debate but long term it is breakaway innovation among communities of developers and inventors that share a common vision that is the most important argument in favor of the expansion of open source software. The downside for entrenched monopolies or those resistant to change is that open source can cause disruption and a ton of incremental competition in markets. IBM's Dr. Bob Sutor, vp for standards and open source, says "tough". Only the greatest sinners of the past can truly repent.
The most visible example of the open standards debate is what is going on in Massachusetts. (see prior story). Some people are calling the state's decision to separate data formats from applications a "Bill of Rights" around information. A gentleman from Boston University told me he not only is confident the decision will stick but that it will be a model for the free world. A Norwegian official said that proprietary data will no longer be acceptable. It is a struggle against existing ways of doing things but long term there are huge benefits for all of us if open document forms proliferate resulting in consistent, error-free, structured ways of doing things. Electronic physician notes about our healthcare would be a good example. IBM has targeted healthcare and education as two industries that can benefit from open documents and the company is opening up it's intellectual property treasure trove to help enable these two industries to make a quantum leap.
What about patents? Similar to open vs. closed, patents are not all good or all bad. It is quite impressive to see how IBM has been able to balance it's proprietary products and it's open source solutions. They are building proprietary code and innovation on top of the open source base. At the same time they are giving patents away that have the potential to accelerate the quality of healthcare and education. In parallel they are leading an effort to improve the quality and integrity of the patent process that all companies use. The patent process has been like the jury system -- not perfect but nobody has come up with a better way. In the case of the patent system, while many companies complain about the system, IBM is taking the lead to do something about it.
Today I attended the IBM Open Source Analyst Briefing which was held at the Marriott in Stamford, Connecticut. I will post a story about what I learned later but first I would like to share something about the Marriott. The hotel had a "Wired-for-Business" connectivity offer which enables guests to "Work smarter with unlimited..." in-room high-speed Internet access plus local and long distance phone calls. The cost is $9.95 per day. Not bad compared to many places. For me, using EV-DO is much better. I am already paying a monthly fee for it and it works more or less everywhere -- but I have to admit it is expensive. I suspect many guests do not have EV-DO and may not want the WiFi offering. They will be confronted with $1.00 for the first 30 minutes of a local call, MCI "daytime operator assisted" rate plus 55% hotel surcharge for long distance plus a "connection charge" of $4.99 for each U.S. long distance call and $9.00 for each "International" call. This is one of many examples of companies exploiting those who are part of a declining market for old-fashioned services. Why would anyone pay $4.99 plus $1.00 for a call that they could make on their cell phone -- probably within their covered minutes. As for international calling, there are many choices including Skype and my people which allows you to transfer from a cell phone to your home and then to a VoIP connection to Europe for less than ten cents per minute. Disintermediation is happening all over the place. Next time you need to call 411, try 800-FREE-411 instead.
The snow on Wednesday was melting fast, the temperature was in the fifties, and the motorcycle ride was nice. Seemed almost like Spring, until I landed the next morning in blowing snow in Oslo, Norway. The snow has been continuous for the past two days but it does not seem to slow the Norwegians down even a little. I have seen kids on skis going up hill and senior citizens navigating the streets using ski poles instead of walkers. Where I am staying in Holmenkollen, near the famous Olympic ski jump, the hotel is full of kids ready to participate in a national ski competition this weekend. While they are flying down the slopes tomorrow, I will be flying to Copenhagen and then on to Newark, New Jersey and home.
The purpose of the trip was to visit with Opera Software ASA where I am a board member. Opera has a lot of exciting things going on. Just this week they announced that it will deliver the Web to Nintendo Dual Screen users. The Opera browser will be sold as a DS card (think of it as a game cartridge). Users simply insert the card into the Wi-Fi enabled Nintendo DS, connect to a network, and begin browsing on two screens. In the U.S. most people don't browse on any handheld screens and now the Japanese are doing it on two screens!
Potentially even more profound is that Opera Software and Freedom Media just announced the world's first mobile AJAX application using Opera as a "platform". In a nutshell AJAX is a set of Internet standards that allow the creation of applications that act and feel as though they are desktop applications, but they are actually web pages residing on a server somewhere on the Internet. After the web page is loaded, it quietly works behind the scenes to deliver data to the web page so that rather than "re-loading" a web page, the content of the page is changed in front of your eyes. Opera calls this new kind of application "Opera Widgets". This is the beginning of something big. What is profound about Opera widgets is that since they "live" on a web server, you can access them from anywhere -- your PC, Mac, Linux setop box, game console, PDA, or your mobile phone. Stay tuned.
It is now Saturday morning and still snowing. If I thought the hotel was crowded with young people, it was nothing compared to the airport. Seems that every family in Norway is on their way to somewhere for a winter break. I asked one young man where he was headed and he said Florida. He was ready for a break from one of the world's great winter wonderlands. SAS hosed downed the wings really well before we took off in the snow.
It was such an exciting week at Demo that it is hard to summarize. There are many reviews of the conference on the web and you can find some of them at Kaboodle (one of the companies that debuted at Demo). There were sixty-eight companies showing off their latest and greatest -- the Demo site has the full list with links to the companies, so if you want to know what is hot take a look here and click the + sign next to Demo 2006 at the top right of the page.
The product least expected but perhaps most enjoyed by the 700+ attendees was the MooBella virtual ice cream vending machine. After attendees made touch-panel choices from up to 96 combinations of flavors and mix-ins, the machine mixed and instantly froze fresh ingredients to produce a delicious scoop of ice cream within 45 seconds. The only drawback I could see was that there was no chocolate. Apparently, that flavor (favorite of 20% of the market) poses special challenges due to the viscosity of cocoa powder.
There were a number of themes that emerged at DEMO. Collaboration was one. Chris Shipley said that 2006 will be the year of collaboration. Demos included virtual meeting platforms, tools that in effect allow people to act as librarians and share their findings with others, and tools for collaborative software development. Another theme was vertical search. Google and Yahoo! are great but highly specialized searches offer much better results. Examples shown included shopping, entertainment, software code, healthcare, and politics.
Mobile applications are still somewhat limited by tiny screens but innovative new ideas were shown that make cell phones more useful than ever. One company showed a phone being used as a personal trainer during exercise. It kept track of your pace and location and plotted results on the screen. Another small device was shown that allows complete control over the phone, music, and every aspect of things going on in the house.
Security solutions were shown to protect our identity, protect our networks, stop spam and viruses at the door, and diagnose Internet traffic and catch malware before it gets to our systems. Biometric technologies were shown to allow secure payment and authentication. I look forward to some of these technologies being used in healthcare.
Through two FutureScan panels I attempted to help the audience see the future of security and computational biology. On the security panel we discussed the general state of Internet security (not healthy) but more importantly some of the research that may lead to a healthier net. To me the most promising thing is PKI. I have written much about this here. The computational biology panel was mind-blowing for most of us. Systems biology models, redesigning proteins, and learning about our genetic history will affect all of our lives. There was a great deal of interest in The Genographic Project. (A dozen DNA kits were given to the audience -- you can get your own here). If you are interested in learning more about the human genome, the panelists recommended Genome by Matt Ridley. I am reading it now. We were all extremely fortunate to have had some of the world's leading experts share their thoughts on the panels. You can find links to all the panelists here.
The most asked question between Demo attendees at breaks and meals is "See anything interesting?". Chris Shipley, Executive Producer of the DEMO Conferences, introduced sixty-eight companies -- there was definitely something for everybody. I was not able to visit all the companies or hear all of their pitches, but at the end of this story I will mention eleven companies that I found most interesting -- "My Top Ten Picks"
Conferences, Healthcare, Internet Technology, Media, Mobile, Music, People, Personal Computing, Public Policy February 12, 2006 01:38 PM
Thursday, February 2, 2006
Top Ten Technology Trends - live blog
Thanks to all for the nice feedback about the "Top 10 Technology Trends" panel yesterday, John Blossom,
Shore Communications Inc., correctly characterized the panelists as "a very powerful cast of characters". He also live-blogged the panels, including this one. You can find his index of panel links here.
There were many good speakers and panels at the SIIA Conference yesterday and today. It was my job to moderate the final panel of the conference which was called "Top 10 Technology Trends". Leading the panel was a special treat for me because the panelists were colleagues that I have known and respected for many years: Jason Calacanis, Blogger and CEO, Weblogs, Inc., Jeff Pulver, Chairman and Founder, pulver.com, Inc., Chris Shipley, Co-Founder & Editorial Director, Guidewire Group, LLC, and Dr. Robert Sutor, VP Standards, IBM Corporation.
We had a lively conversation about a wide range of technologies and then some Q&A with the audience. One question was "what *exactly* is the list of the top ten technologies?". It was a fair question. I purposely planned the panel as more of a loosely structured discussion and did not want to box the panelists in to a list of things but nevertheless, I promised to post a list of the top ten things we talked about. These are not in priority sequence. I believe they represent a consensus.
Top Ten Technology Trends
Blogging software highly integrated with all the other software we use
Video blogging technology being practical for many more people
Voice over IP known more for applications than for price
Two important developments in the first month of the year are enabling the web to move a few steps closer to ubiquity. Most mobile phones do not have a web browser -- or if they do have one it likely does not work very well. Generally, the mobile browsing speed has been slow and the displays hard to read because the pages were designed for a PC browser. Those shortcomings have changed dramatically with the introduction of Opera Mini.
The Oslo, Norway based Opera Software has announced the worldwide release of Opera Mini, a full Web browser that runs on almost every mobile phone, including low-end handsets -- in other words you don't need a $500 "Personal Digital Assistant" to get a great browser. This is quite a breakthrough. Trials of Opera Mini in the Nordics and in Germany during the fall of 2005 resulted in a user base of more than one million people. You can get more information and download instructions at the Opera Mini site. For most users, it is as simple as downloading a new ringtone.
Opera Mini was designed with mobile users in mind. "Mini" compresses Web pages by up to 80% and reformats them using an Opera developed technology called Small-Screen Rendering. SSR makes web pages fast loading and easy to read. It can also save money if you are paying your carrier for data "by the byte". On the Mini homepage you will see the familiar Google search box. Mini also has a customizable bookmark list to make it easy to save and surf your favorite sites. If your mobile phone supports EV-DO or WiFi you will find that surfing the web on a handheld device is a very nice experience. Opera Mini is available in English, German, Spanish, French, Russian, Polish, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Finnish. Get the full story at opera.com.
Speaking of WiFi, wireless access points -- known as hotspots -- are continuing to flourish -- as predicted here for a number of years. The number of worldwide hotspots listed in JiWire's online directory has now surpassed 100,000. The growth since a year ago was 87 percent -- from 53,779 hotspots in 93 countries, to 100,335 locations in 115 countries. In spite of the early start, America has only about a third of the hotspots. The top cities are Seoul, Tokyo, London, and Paris. The good news is the growing availability. In spite of lobbying by telecommunications companies to prevent cities from offering free WiFi, and despite predictions that WiFi could not "scale", the growth continues. With the introduction of the new Opera Mini browser, continued price-performance of mobile phones, and the spread of WiFi, we are getting close to the vision of a fast, always-on, everywhere, natural, easy, intelligent, and trusted Internet.
The debate about the OpenDocument format is still underway. See this link for a list of the stories in patrickWeb about it. Bob Sutor over at IBM just posted a very good story called "Open standards, open source, open minds, open opportunities". Rather than repeat or plagiarize it, here is a link to it. It is a worthwhile read about the difference between "open standards" and "open source". He also talks about an "openness movement" that he hopes will take hold in 2006. Me too. Bob will no doubt be discussing this on the SIIA Technology panel which I will be moderating in New York in a few weeks
Today's Wall Street Journal story, "Web Phones Go Unplugged", summed it up pretty well. There is a convergence taking place between cell phones and Internet phones. Utopia has not quite arrived but at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month there was a slew of new announcements surrounding Vonage, Skype, and various new handsets. The "ideal" phone is very close.
Imagine that your "cell phone" is on your belt or in your pocket. You are at home. When you make a call, the connection goes through your DSL or Cable Modem over the Internet and through one of the VoIP providers such as Vonage. When the phone "rings", you will hear a voice saying who is calling and if you look at the phone you will see a picture of the person and the person will have a unique "ring" associated with them so you can tell just from the ring. When you get in the car with your Bluetooth headset on, you will be using the same phone that you were using in the house except that phone calls will use the cellular network. When you arrive at the airport, the phone will pick up the free WiFi service being offered and you will once again be able to use Vonage or Skype for unlimited long distance calling.
Some would argue that the environment I have described is already here. There are in fact quite a few products and services available. However, there are a few wrinkles. A seamless 911 system is not quite there. There are still some places you might be that have no reliable signal of any kind. A power failure at home can cut you off from communications if you don't have a good cellular signal or if your phone is dependent on a base station. Some telecommunications providers and airport operators are attempting to block free WiFi services. Finally, some of the devices have so many features that they are hard to adapt to for many people. In spite of the wrinkles, we are getting very close to the point where the Internet is pervasive in our lives for all forms of communications and interactions. I am sure we will see and hear much more about all this at the upcoming DEMO conference.
Just back from sunny Florida. When we left Palm Beach Gardens on Thursday it was 84 degrees and blue skies. It was a bit cooler when we got to Palm Coast and St. Augustine Beach. There was construction everywhere -- condos, homes, malls, highways, and infrastructure. Seems like a "bubble" is a legitimate concern.
The sky was blue in Connecticut today too but the temperature was only in the high twenties. The Widder electric gloves and vest kept me warm for a short twelve-mile motorcycle ride. The wind chill made it well below freezing.
There is a lot of conference activity coming up in the next few months. I am looking forward to all of it but have a lot of preparation to get ready for the three panels I will be moderating -- one at SIIA and two at Demo. Stay tuned for more about them.
Word (no pun intended) is that Massachusetts is hanging tough with their decision to require the OpenDocument Format. It is shaping up to be a battle of Microsoft versus the people. It is not about Office and it is not about open source. It is about the ownership of documents -- do they belong to the person who created the document or do they belong to the application which created the document? That is the issue.
Opera Software continues to innovate in Web browser technologies. This past week they announced a partnership with Industria, a leading broadband communication solutions provider and IPTV systems integrator in Iceland. This is the tip of the "iceberg" that will accelerate the move toward the use of open Web technology in Television -- the word is already starting to sound old-fashioned.
Many more things in the blog queue to write about. Stay tuned.
Blogging, Conferences, Internet Technology, Media, Motorcycles, Travels January 7, 2006 04:28 PM
Monday, December 19, 2005
The Internet Division
In the "old days" -- ten years ago -- we used to say that a month was three or four Internet months or that a year was three or four Internet years. It was a way of expressing how fast things were moving. Now that it has been ten years since the Internet Division was started at IBM (and four years since my e-tirement began) it seems appropriate to reflect on those early days. My colleague Irving Wladawsky-Berger posted a nice story of his recollections of the formation of the division and my goal here is to complement his posting with some of my thoughts.
Before getting into the history, I must say how proud I am to see how ibm.com has evolved from a small computer under the desk at IBM Headquarters in Armonk to a global powerhouse of a communications medium. I can't say that I foresaw even a fraction of the amazing capabilities of the Internet but one thing I was sure of -- it was an amazing breakthrough in how to communicate with people both inside and outside of the company.
It was May 24, 1994 when ibm.com came to life after a lot of hard work by my colleagues. (take a look at an ibm.com page from 1996). The history of the effort has been reported in a number of magazines and books, including a story in the Harvard Business Review. The effort was inspired, in part, by a paper called "Get Connected" which I wrote in late 1993. The concepts described in the paper seem very primitive now, but at the time most people thought they were revolutionary or radical or even weird.
There were many firsts on ibm.com. It was not the first website but it was a very early pioneer in the commercial exploitation of the web. It was first to have a CEO give an audio message on the homepage, first of the top largest companies in the world to put it's annual report on the web and provide an online employment application form. Back in those days Microsoft was saying that the web would not amount to much because it was too slow and too insecure. There were many "heroes" in the pioneering days of Internet technology at IBM and I was privileged to be part of the group. There was a grassroots knowledge of the Internet in the company and I became the "spiritual leader" that helped them to be heard. Irving was the executive who enabled me to be heard. Last month Irving and I spent a morning being interviewed by some of the ibm.com team on our opinions about the subject of innovation. A video of the interviews and podcast are posted here. And now for a bit of the history. (read more)
In 1980, while serving as branch manager for IBM in Philadelphia, I had the occasion to visit a senior executive at one of our customers -- The Campbell Soup Company in Camden, New Jersey. I don't remember who I met with or what we talked about but I will never forget the executive's secretary who was sitting at her small desk in the executive's office. This is how it was for all the executive secretaries at the company. I thought it was a bit strange then and increasingly over the years thought even the term "secretary" was outdated. Over the last twenty-five years the title has mostly been replaced by "administrative assistant". In some companies they call the role "admin". Whatever you call them, their responsibilities have changed dramatically.
In the early days a secretary might take dictation, type letters, arrange the bosses desk, and pour coffee - even make coffee. Today's administrative assistant performs information research and retrieval, plans and books travel, collaborates with colleagues to optimize the use of their principal's time, anticipates the needs of those they support, handles inquiries from inside and outside of the company, prepares presentation materials, and takes online courses to improve their skills. That is just a sampling. Administrative assistants are invaluable assets that leverage the scarce resources of the organization they are part of. These are just a few of the reasons that I have always had the greatest respect for administrative assistants.
Once a year I am privileged to spend an hour in an interview with Lillian Davis who is responsible for Site Administrative Services at IBM in Austin, Texas. That is her day job but she also serves as the doyen of the Senior Administrative Council. This group of 100+ administrative assistants from all parts of IBM serve as the thought leaders for thousands of other assistants and they share their expertise as well as make suggestions to the company for improved procedures. Aside from all that, when you hear Lillian on this podcast you will think she is a major network news anchor.
As discussed here many times, grass roots movements such as the Internet and Linux are hard to stop. However, one of the impediments to very fast adoption of Linux as compared to just the fast adoption that is taking place has been the underlying threat of legal action to a user or vendor of Linux by a patent holder.
The concept is simple, but potentially brilliant. OIN, using the funding provided by the founding companies, will purchase Linux related patents in the open market. It will then offer them on a royalty free basis to any individual or company member that agrees not to sue the other members. OIN is starting out with a set of electronic commerce patents that were purchased
from business-to-business (B2B) software pioneer Commerce One. More purchases will follow and likely the purchases will spur even more innovation for systems and applications that leverage Linux.
OIN will have no income since it will seek no royalties from it's patent portfolio, so how do the founders make a return on their investment
in OIN? Through the accelerated adoption of Linux which in turn opens the door for more sales of hardware, sofware, and services. Much of the IT industry and it's customers will embrace the OIN move -- with the exception of
Microsoft which has argued that relying on "open
source" software poses legal risks.
Market researcher IDC estimates that the worldwide Linux business will grow 25.9 percent
annually, doubling from $20 billion this year to more than $40 billion by 2008. If OIN is successful the growth rate could be even higher.
According to a story in the Washington Post, the U.S. Copyright Office is about to launch a new web-based program to allow artists to register certain works for copyright protection. This is good. It was also reported that the new web site is going to require the use of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. This is bad.
Industry experts of all kinds have come forward to argue that the Copyright Office plan would be a very bad precedent and that the application process should work with any and all browsers. I would say it differently. Governments -- and businesses, hospitals, universities, and all of us -- should create content and applications for the web using open Internet standards. Open Internet standards are those developed collaboratively by a representative group of companies, organizations, and experts. It is open Internet standards that make the Internet work the same on all corners of the earth and make web content readable by anyone anywhere.
No doubt some will advance conspiracy theories that Microsoft is attempting to lock-up the Federal government with proprietary technology and then use the combined leverage to force all of us to use Internet Explorer. I do not subscribe to that. In most situations like these it comes down to paths of least resistance. It is easier to build an application for one browser, test it for one browser, and tell the users to just use one browser. But, does that make it right? No.
The web is for all of us. Some of us like Opera, some like Firefox, some like Internet Explorer, some like Safari, and some like various Linux browsers that are available. That's ok. Competition is good. If it were not for Netscape, Microsoft would not have developed IE beyond it's humble beginnings. If it was not for Opera and Firefox, Microsoft would not be developing IE 7. The competition will result in better and better browsers. The burden is on web content and application developers to use the open Internet standards and to do cross-browser testing. If the standards are followed, the testing should be simple. People should be able to use whatever browser they want -- as long as their browser was built to support the open industry standards. The market will decide which ones they like best. We don't all drive the same car or use the same kind of PC. There is no reason we should all be using the same browser.
Epilogue: One reason that I am involved with Opera Software is that they have a deep commitment to open industry standards. See story about their new browser.
This is number 10 in a series of updates on "Long Distance". What is long distance? When in Singapore or New Zealand or other parts of Southeastern Asia, you know you are a long way from New York -- like 10,000 miles or so. Those places are a "long distance" away. But when it comes to a "telephone" conversation, the words "long distance" don't really mean anything. Many of us remember the phone ringing at grandma's house at holiday time and the room immediately being urged to "shhhhhh" because the call was "long distance". Hurry, we would say as we waited our turn for a few seconds to say hello to the caller. Those days are history. (read more)
Chris Anderson from Wired talked passionately at Supernova about how the Internet makes it possible to exploit the "niche" portion of the demand for products, services, and content. His theory is that there is more total demand -- revenue -- from a large number of little known products that there is from a small number of big "hits". He calls the curve that reflects this phenomenon "the long tail".
In particular, the future of entertainment -- books, songs, movies -- is at the "shallow end of the bitstream". All of us have unique likes and dislikes. One person's trash is another person's treasure. Prior to the Internet bringing us Amazon and Netflix, we had to be content with what was available in the "store" and the store would only carry something that had good odds of selling. The fact is that there is a lot out there that may not mean much to the masses but is exactly what someone somewhere is looking for.
My friend and colleague, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, recently found a personalized recommendation at Netflix for a movie called Blue, by a Polish director, Krzysztof Kieslowski. Irving said he had never heard of the movie or the director but the movie had a very high rating, member comments were positive, and professional reviewers that he trusts all highly recommended the movie. A mouse click later the DVD was on it's way to Irving and he soon enjoyed it greatly. It turns out the movie was part of a trilogy and he ended up ordering the other two movies also.
A slightly different phenomenon is happening with music. iTunes recommends music on a personalized basis but also provides "iMixes" of various artists and links to music collections that are favorites of music stars themselves. By following the trail from list to list you can get pretty far out on the long tail and find some highly unique music. None of them will sell millions but millions of people will find music that they really like. There will still be "mega-hits" but the world of creating and retailing is being turned upside down. The Long Tail is a really important story and I urge everyone to read it.
The evolution of the "browser" has had a huge impact on making content available to everyone everywhere. We also take it for granted that we can walk up to any computer connected to the Internet and expect to find a browser there. Not only that but we automatically know how to use it! The world went from zero to hundreds of millions of users in a very short time. In effect, the largest focus group ever validated that & browsing& was a fundamental human trait. No training required. Since most of us spend a good deal of time browsing, shouldn't we have a browser that meets all of our needs and gives us the fastest, simplest, and most secure browsing experience? Just because Internet Explorer has the largest market share, does that mean it is our only choice? If General Motors sells the most cars does that mean we all choose a GM car? This story is about the history of browsers and why I have chosen to make the new Opera 8 my browser of choice on both the ThinkPad and the Sony Ericsson P910a mobile phone. Why? Speed, Security and Simplicity. (read more)
The News-Times of Danbury ran a front page story this morning ("Expert urges educators to harness Internet") about a meeting I had yesterday with a group of Connecticut school system superintendents, managers, and staff. It was a prelude to a talk I will be giving on Monday night at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Connecticut. It will be at 6 PM at the student center on the Midtown campus and is free and open to the public. The night before Knovel Corporation hosted a keynote at the Nylink 2005 Annual Meeting, which was held in historic Saratoga Springs, New York. Nylink is a not-for-profit membership organization for all types of libraries and information organizations throughout New York State and surrounding areas.
I enjoy sharing my views about Internet Technology and hope the audiences gain from it. I sure do. It is the Q&A time where I always learn a lot. The librarians and educators, in particular, had a lot of really good questions. With the librarians we had a lot of dialogue about blogging and they got me thinking about how reputation and certification systems might evolve for blogs. With the educators we also talked a lot about blogging but even more about podcasting. They challenged me about how podcasting will be integrated with the educational systems. My answer was that teachers need to embrace the new technologies and that administrators need to recognize and reward those who do.
It occurred to me just how powerful podcasting could be for teachers and for students. For example, a teacher could record a daily "message" -- sort of a mini radio program that reviews what was covered that day, what the homework assignment is, and a preview of what will be covered tomorrow. It might be 15 minutes in length. Or there might be recordings by six teachers that are five minutes each. When students get home they see the blog feeds of the teachers and they download them to iTunes and then synch them to their iPods. The next morning the students listen to their teachers on the bus on the way to school -- for some of them while also playing a handheld game on their mobile phone. I am confident that some teachers will not only enjoy doing this but will become really good "DJ's" -- so good that the students might even listen more and play games less. In fact as reputations begin to emerge about who the best "TJ's" are the competition may lead to better education. Let's hope so.
I have to admit that I have been talking a lot about Linux lately. On February 16 the LinuxWorld Conference was held in Boston and I was fortunate to be a speaker there as I previously discussed. An interview entitled "It's About Freedom" was published in Linux Executive Report and distributed at the conference. It summarizes my thoughts about Linux pretty well.
One month later, this past Sunday, the COMMON Conference was held in Chicago and I reiterated some of the same points. The conference was a bit smaller (2,000 vs. 8,000) attendees, but nevertheless an very enthusiastic audience of 1,200 was on hand. COMMON attendees are users of IBM's iSeries eServers. Most people in the world never heard of "iSeries" but there are hundreds of thousands of them out there serving the needs of small and medium businesses and distributed locations of very large businesses. The Chief Information Officers of companies using the iSeries are passionate about the speed, flexibility, security, and reliability of the systems. IBM attends the COMMON conference but doesn't need to extol the iSeries virtues because the IBM customers do it for them.
Tomorrow night I will be speaking at the Society for Information Management - Fairfield/Westchester branch in Stamford, Connecticut.
From
iSeries "News Wire Daily"...
Out of Context: Penguin Power
"Linux is not about "free" — it's about freedom. There will be a lot of studies coming out saying Windows is cheaper or Linux is cheaper. I don't know which is cheaper, but I know which is better. ... Ultimately, Linux is going to be the most secure."— John Patrick, COMMON keynote speaker
Of all the many conferences I attend each year, my favorite is Demo. Many conferences offer insight in various ways. All conferences offer a chance to network with friends and colleagues from the industry. Only Demo offers the chance to meet with the top couple of people from dozens of technology companies, see their product in action, and discuss their plans and strategies with them. The conference is attended by analysts, consultants, editors, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs. This year was special because it was the fifteenth year of Demo. There were several people there who had attended fourteen of the fifteen (I have been to thirteen of them). There were 73 companies showing off their new offerings.
Various stories have appeared in the media about Demo this week and news about the conference will reach 250 million people around the world via print and online media.
Chris Shipley is the Executive Producer for DEMO Conferences and she always opens the conference with her vision of where things are headed and what technologies will have the biggest impact. Half or so of the companies get six minutes to tell their story and do their demo on stage -- others get one minute. During half of the morning and half of the afternoon, the 750 attendees get to mingle at the company booths. Needless to say, a lot of networking occurs and much of it leads to new relationships and in some cases financing.
Chris says that she gets to be like a kid in a candy store - she looks at more than a thousand companies in order to select the ones that present at Demo. At breaks, colleagues always ask each other "see anything you like?". I always do. It is hard to summarize the excitement I felt for what I saw. I'll highlight a few things I saw but you can see a one page summary and link for each company on the list of demonstrators. (read more)
The team at Macromedia has done a fantastic job in creating Dreamweaver MX 2004. Dreamweaver contains just about everything one needs to build, publish, and maintain a website. It is hard for me to imagine building a website without strong WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) capability. The one thing that Dreamweaver does not have is an easy way to create and maintain a menu for your site. I have had a menu on my homepage for as long as I can remember but it has always been a challenge. Then I discovered Project Seven Development, a small software company in Dobson, North Carolina. They have a product called Tree Menu Magic. Tree Menu Magic is a Dreamweaver extension kit that enables you to make tree-style menus. The process is totally automated from inside Dreamweaver via a user interface that mirrors the actual menu you are building (or modifying). Tree Menu Magic is what is currently part of patrickWeb.
The product and the support have been of excellent quality but it was time for an update my menu so I stopped by PVII to see what was new. Glad I did -- because I found Pop Menu Magic. It is quite clear that the PVII team had a strong vision about what the perfect "popup" menu was and then they made a tool that builds it. Pop Menu Magic is powerful and feature-rich - a fully automated Dreamweaver Extension that allows you to insert a professionally styled popup menu on your page "in seconds" -- well I would say minutes, but definitely a very productive tool. Popup menus are much more natural and dynamic than the "tree" style currently on patrickWeb. The menu can be vertical like mine or horizontal and there are no limits to the number of sub-levels you can have. My test page with the new menu is right here on this page. This blog posting will not change, but the test page I am testing and refining will. The background color and appearance will surely change but please fee free to give me any feedback about it. I plan to complete testing and populate the new menu across all the hundreds of pages of patrickWeb when I get back from a trip a week from now.
I am fortunate to attend many conferences each year as one can see from the engagements calendar. I find them all productive but my all time favorite conference is Demo. Demo is recognized as the major event that "demos" the products and services poised to have the greatest impact on the technology landscape in the year to come. Every year, technology executives, venture investors, journalists and analysts converge at Demo to preview and discuss new ideas. The best part of the conference is the opportunity to network with many old and new friends. DEMO@15! marks the 15th year of the conference -- the 13th year for me. In that time, 1,500 companies have launched technologies live on the Demo stage -- and a few have launched revolutions. Notable on the list have been Palm, TiVo and Java.
Below are some of the places I plan to be during the first quarter of the year. I am speaking at most of them , (including opening keynotes at both LinuxWorld and COMMON.
As I updated the engagements page, it was fun to reminisce over conferences of the past four years.
The IT Conference in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil which I attended on October 20, 2004 was produced by IT Midia. One of their publications is INFORMATIONWEEK Brasil. Rachel Rubin is a reporter for the magazine and she interviewed me (by email) for a special issue which was distributed to the 300 attendees of the conference. The magazine is published in Portuguese only so I have included Rachel's original questions and my answers here in English. I do not claim to be an expert on the subjects she asked about but hopefully I offered some simple ways to think about the concepts. (read interview)
A story in the New York Times this morning described how the Federal Trade Commission is going after a former fax spammer who is now allegedly using "spyware" to track our activities on the web, push us to various marketing programs, barrage us with advertisements, and otherwise make our Internet experience less than positive. I think the FTC is doing a pretty good job on this. We do not need new laws; we just need to do a better job enforcing the ones we have. There are existing laws that prohibit "unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce". Spyware sounds like a match to me. The more important answer however, as I have written here many times, is not legal. People such as the one described are constantly looking for ways to put things in our face and maneuvering through legal nuances until they get stopped and then moving on to another tactic. The best answer is the use of technology.
Some argue that Microsoft Windows should solve all the problems, but I don't feel that is what we really want. We do want Microsoft to continue to improve the quality of Windows, but do we want to be dependent on one company, one operating system (Windows), for all known issues and problems with personal computers? I don't think so. The more they cram into Windows the bigger the target for the attackers. Fortunately, there are many innovative startup companies out there who have developed some very good tools that can help us. I hope that everyone already uses anti-virus, firewall, backup, and spam blocking tools -- there are many available. (See PC Magazine if you need help in deciding which to use). There are some other good tools to use as well.
I use Spybot Search & Destroy by Patrick Kolla. I run it every week or so and it always finds nefarious things that have been placed on my computer by DoubleClick and other advertising/marketing "trackers" that seem to care little about our privacy. Spybot also has an immunize feature to automatically ditch a list of bad actors that can cause actual harm to your system.
Another excellent utility I use is called Registry Mechanic. Registry Mechanic analyses the Windows "registry" which is a database of technical information about all the software you have on your system. Problems with the registry are a common cause of Windows crashes and error messages. The registry mechanic repairs invalid registry entries and increases your system speed and stability by removing irrelevant information.
I can't resist adding that if you have not yet tried the Opera browser, you are missing a treat. The multiple tabbed windows and impressive speed are part of the attraction but there is also the advantage of no longer getting any pop-up windows. None. Opera is also very responsive in dealing with reported security issues. There is quite a community developing around Opera.
When I said yesterday that there may be some further financial challenges ahead for the "traditional" telecommunications companies, I did not realize that on that same day AT&T Corp., the nation's largest long-distance carrier, announced a plan to eliminate 7,000 jobs and write off $11.4 billion in assets. The Wall Street Journal reported that the company's CFO had said "We've been doing a lot of streamlining to make the company more nimble and competitive". Many large companies have gone through these major down-sizing's before -- including IBM in the early to mid 1990's. Usually, they are caused when management lose's touch with markets, customers, and emerging technology trends. Unfortunately, many loyal employees lose their jobs as a result.
AT&T said it will eliminate a total of about 12,000 jobs this year. Even more unfortunate is the fact that if management in these situations does not act, and cut the staff and assets, the result is the company completely fails and all of the employees lose their job. In the case of telecommunications, it is not an industry that is going to go away. Quite to the contrary, more "bits" of data (zeroes and ones) will be traveling through communications networks than ever -- continued growth as far into the future as anyone can see. It is the technology that is changing much more rapidly than "traditional" telecommunications companies planned for. Many of the bits will be digital representations of our voices (VoIP) as we talk using Skype and other choices from a whole new industry growing rapidly by integrating voice as data and with data. There will be more growth of bits through the air than through copper wires and more bits which are assembled into "packets" and using Internet technology as the way to move from point A to point B.
Tumultuous times are ahead for the telecommunications industry. There will be winners and losers. Users of the Internet, both consumer and business, will be huge beneficiaries as Internet technology races ahead.
There are many people who know much more than I do about telecommunications and I am really pleased that a few of them at IBM offered some feedback on my latest story about "long distance".
First, thanks to Mike Nelson, formerly Director of Technology Policy at the
Office of Plans and Policy at the FCC, for pointing out the typo I made about the cost of Skype. Most phone calls are .017 Euros (about two cents) per minute. (story updated).
Secondly, thanks to Stu Feldman, formerly Technical Leader of the Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture Consortium (TINA-C) and a long-time veteran at both Bellcore and Bell Labs, for reminding me that some non-trivial fraction the Verizon phone bill goes toward subsidizing the costs of supplying telephone service to rural subscribers who live far out from population centers and can not afford traditional wire-based services, let alone the more profitable incremental services such as call waiting, caller ID, etc. As for the cost of legal overhead, Stu points out that these may become "stranded costs" as users move to different technologies and companies, such as voice over the Internet and Skype.
Finally, thanks to Laurent Hayem in Paris. Laurent has worked in the area of the cost and operations in telecommunications, telephony, voice over IP, and call centers. He has been analyzing various telecom bills and new offerings in Europe and has observed that a split is emerging between FIXED and MOBILE. What he is referring to is that the wired infrastructure has a relatively fixed cost structure and the subscription model is moving in the same direction; i.e. an "all you can eat" price that includes local, long distance, and related services. The mobile model is considered more of a high value-add service and therefore has higher and use-oriented rates. It remains to be seen whether this will continue to be true as we get more and more handheld devices with WiFi in them. Laurent also suggested that Broadband VideoPhones may soon become as natural to use as Skype. The D-Link DVC-2000 is an early example of the technology. Just as Skype takes us all to a new level by allowing us to hear someone at the other end of the Net, the Broadband VideoPhone will allow us to see the person. The idea of the "Picture Phone" has been around for decades but now that high speed, standards-based, communications (the Internet) is becoming pervasive and lower in cost, the "vision" will finally happen.
The Verizon phone bill for last month's service at the lakehouse was $16.11. It seems like a reasonable amount until you look at the detailed breakdown. The Touchtone Line was $5.68. And then there were the "other" charges. Federal line cost charge - $6.05. Local Number Portability Surcharge - $.21. Federal Universal Service Fund Surcharge - $.56. And then there were charges for "calls not covered by your local calling options" - $1.01. And then there was the Pennsylvania Relay Surcharge - $.07 and the Public Safety Emergency Telephone Act (911) Fee - $1.50. The "Verizon Toll Charges" were $.70 for four minutes. Bottom line, the phone service was less than $6 and the "other" was more than $10. Where does that $10 go? How much of it went to pay the salaries and fees of FCC and Verizon legal staff for the meetings that have with each other? How much went to pay for reams of 8 1/2 x 14 paper and the copying, overnight deliveries, faxing, and handling of it?
All things considered, telephone service in the United States is affordable for most people. Unfortunately, this is not true in many other parts of the world. During my visit to Egypt last month I learned that more than 75% of the population has no telephone service. On the one hand, we should not complain about all the fees and taxes, but, on the other hand it has reached the point where it is non-trivial. If I had made a lot of "long distance" calls, the service bill and accompanying taxes would have been a lot more. A lot more. I don't use "long distance" service at the lakehouse. Unfortunately, I don't use the
Sony Ericsson P900 there either. AT&T Wireless coverage is great in Cairo, but is extremely poor in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Although I don't have good cell coverage, I do have a cable modem for high speed Internet access and so I can use Skype and SkypeOut for "long distance". Skype is like AOL Instant Messaging. To make a call to a fellow Skype member, you look at your Skype list (like an AIM buddy list), and see if your friend or relative is online. If so, their name appears and you double-click it. You hear a ring from the speakers of your ThinkPad. The person at the other end says "hello" and their voice is picked up by the microphone built into every ThinkPad. You say "hi" and you have a conversation. If you have a high-speed Internet connection, the quality of a Skype call is stunning -- better than cell phones. Skype works on the PC, the MAC, and with Linux. Although I use Skype with my ThinkPad, it works with any PC (and some handheld PDA's) which have a microphone. You can get really good quality microphones and headsets in various configurations at Radio Shack.
The cost? Free. Time limits? None. How do they make money? SkypeOut. SkypeOut lets you call any phone anywhere in the world from your computer. Just like Skype, you can add phone numbers to your Skype list. Most phone calls are .017 Euros (about two cents) per minute. You use your credit card to buy ten or twenty Euros on your account and when you get low you can buy some more. The good news is that ten Euros (approximately $12) allows you to make roughly 600 minutes of calls. If you call a mobile phone in some countries the charges run higher. Calling a Kenyan mobile phone is on the order of thirty cents per minute (probably to cover cost of taxes, fees, and surcharges).
Skype was created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, and has received investment capital from Tim Draper, Draper Fisher Jurvetson ePlanet, Index Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and Mangrove Capital Partners. I have not seen their business model but I suspect they have a very low-overhead cost structure and no legacy of processes that burden most telecommunications companies. The Skype Group is headquartered in Luxembourg with offices also in London and Tallinn.
We are seeing the beginning of a huge boom in voice over the Internet. The major potential is not just the lower cost, but rather the integration of voice as just another kind of data. The result will be call centers that are integrated with web pages and phone calls that are integrated with our calendars and contact lists. The potential to simplify our lives and save us time is very large. The only possible inhibitor I can see is the regulators and lobbyists who want to keep things the way they are and hold back the new technologies. As of this very moment, there are 887,438 users connected to Skype. The horse is out of the barn and it may be hard to reign her in.
It was a rainy day and so I decided to work on something I have been putting off for a long time -- cleaning up my contact list. We all have contact lists. Some of us keep them in a Palm Pilot or other personal digital assistant. Others keep them in a small spiral notepad. Some still use the Rolodex. When Alfred Neustadter (born in Brooklyn, NY in 1910 and died in 1996) invented the Rolodex and began marketing it in 1958, he may not have realized that in the twenty-first century, when people in the world of business and government referred to a "well connected" person with a lot of contacts, they would say he or she "has a good Rolodex".
To build my "Rolodex", I started to accumulate contact records more than twenty years ago using a system at IBM called PROFS (The IBM Professional Office System that allowed users to "send and receive information via a computer terminal") which employees used mostly for internal communications. In the early 1990's I got to know Bill Machrone at PC Magazine. Shortly after that I got hooked on learning everything I could about the Internet and I discovered a set of standards called X.400 which provided a way to send emails between various incompatible email systems using the Internet as the transport between them. Back then most companies had no connection between the Internet and their internal systems even though today we just take it for granted that all email conforms to the Internet standard called SMTP which assures compatibility. I still remember the joy (and complexity) of sending Bill an email and him replying to it. Bill and many consultants and members of the press were using MCIMail, a proprietary messaging system that used addresses that were like phone numbers; e.g.
445-4496. I began to accumulate contact information for those with whom I corresponded on various systems including Compuserve, Spectrum, and Prodigy. In 1994 I began to use Lotus Notes and I consolidated all of the contact information into the Notes address book. I continue to use Notes with IBM but, for various reasons since I retired in 2001, I primarily use Outlook.
So much for the history -- the cumulative result of many years of messaging was a contact list numbering 3,838 names with corresponding email addresses, fax and phone numbers, snailmail addresses and other information. I have always considered the contact list to be an important asset and have regularly kept multiple backup copies of it on my ThinkPad, my server, on DVD, USB Keys and a synchronized copy of the Sony Ericsson P900. I can not imagine losing it. On the other hand, a lot of the information had become obsolete. People move, retire, and unfortunately pass on. I decided to take the time to go through each and every entry, pruning out those that I knew were duplicative or invalid for whatever reason. It took quite a few hours and the end result was a reduction in the number of contact records from 3,838 to 2,475 or 35.5%. A savings in space but more importantly an upgrade in the quality of the asset. (read more)
Around the time of ibm.com's tenth anniversary, I spoke with a number of reporters from Latin America. Leo González Pérez was very interested in some of the musical things I have done, hence the picture of me with a baton. I am an amateur to put it mildly. The concert was my first ever conducting experience. The following paragraphs contain the translated and Spanish versions of Leo's story. (read more)
Recently I wrote a short story about "virtualization". Feedback was that it made a really complicated subject a bit simpler to understand. One reader, Shyam Verma, a software specialist from South Carolina, offered a reflection about the subject that I thought it was relevant and well expressed. He put virtualization in a very broad context of what is going on in the world of information technology. With Shyam's permission, I am sharing his thoughts here.
"I try to understand the new world we live in where information integration is crucial to the success of business. We need a unified view of people, processes and technology. There is so much information and so little knowledge. The data that companies keep and use is constantly growing. The data can become useless or a liability if not used properly. It can consume valuable bandwidth and computing resources inadvertently. Universal connectivity, which is a good thing, can also become the ultimate source of discomfort because of security, privacy, identity, authenticity and accidental or malicious threats. Now we have new challenges to deal with. I see a secure virtualized computing environment as the next logical step. Reduce complexity by aggregating all computing resources and then manage them centrally. In essence we are going back in time and recreating a system 390 or an MVS operating system with one exception - it is open and standards based architecture where qualified improvements from any source can be incorporated and new values can be brought to industry, government, healthcare and businesses of all kinds. We can also create new solutions based on the technologies used for big businesses and tailor them to small and medium businesses".
Mena Trott and I will be guests on Sanjog Aul's AVVAL Radio Talk Show on Technology. The current series of programs is entitled "Managing Technology The Right Way!", and the particular focus tomorrow will be blogging. Mena is co-founder of Six Apart which produces Movable Type (the blogging software which I use) and TypePad which is a blogging service. If you are interested, just click on the listen link. The broadcast will be at 11 AM EST tomorrow morning (Friday, July 27). If you want to call in with a question the number is 1-866-233-7861.
There have been numerous
press articles lately abouTt the security problems with Internet Explorer. Some companies and government agencies have
been recommending to their employees that they switch to a different browser. An obvious choice is the Opera browser.
I have
written about the virtues of the Opera browser quite a few times and I know that many readers use it. It has now
gotten easier than ever to make the switch. Opera Software just released a series of one-click setups that
instantly change Opera's toolbars, menus, keyboard shortcuts, and mouse gestures. One of them emulates an IE-like
look and feel. Once you get the hang of the Opera browser you can begin to customize it to your own preferences.
If you want to check out Opera, take a look here.
There is a lot going on at Opera. I do not mean the Metropolitan Opera in New York, although there has been a lot going on there too (more than 200 performances this past season). I am referring instead to Opera Software ASA, the Norwegian software company. Opera's vision is to deliver the best Internet experience on any device -- any device. PC's will continue to be important and there will be more and more of them over time, but there will be even more "devices" or "things". If it is electronic, it will likely have a WiFi chip in it. If it has a WiFi chip then it will be connected to the Internet. Things connected to the Internet are much easier to use if they have a simple interface -- like the Opera browser.
What kind of devices in addition to PC's? Mobile phones, personal digital assistants, televisions, cameras, GPS receivers, cars, boats, motorcycles, and medical instruments in the operating room -- just to name a few. Billions of devices that will benefit from a boundary-less community connected to the Internet. As a company, Opera has some interesting values that it takes quite seriously. For example, Opera has a deep respect for their users and for the Opera community. The company also has a strong belief in the culture, health, and growth of the Internet -- which means it will never seek to hinder the Net's continuous evolutionary process by imposing proprietary standards. When it comes to building browser software, Opera abides by the five S's: Speed (really fast), Size (small), Security (really good), Standards Compliance, and State of the Art. If you haven't tried the new Opera 7.5 yet, I highly recommend visiting the Opera site and you will quickly see, as I did, that the Opera browser provides a very unique and pleasant Internet Experience. And now for a look at some of the latest Opera innovations. (read more)
New York was the place of business for me on five occasions during the past four days (you can read that as my excuse for not writing many stories on patrickWeb this week). I ran into several people that I had not seen in a very long time and invariably, one of us asked "What have you been up to?". I was happy to learn that some of them were CEO's or CFO's of major companies and I am proud to know them. In my own case, since e-tirement at the end of 2001, I have yet to develop a really succinct and clear answer to the question of what I am "up to". The short version would be writing, speaking, serving on boards, attending conferences, and spending some time (not enough) on my hobbies. I feel very fortunate to be able to keep an active participation in the technology industry and to help out in various non-profit organizations.
There is a long queue of things that I plan to write about when I get back from Japan, including the status of WiFi, blogging, various Internet technologies, and spam. I am very bullish about all of them -- yes, even spam. One thing is for sure and that is that legislation can not solve the spam problem. However, some of us have been saying for quite a while that technology can and will solve the problem. Numerous companies are focused on this and venture capital money is flowing to them. More importantly, the technical community -- including some of the best and brightest people in the industry -- are on the case. I knew this would happen. Spam has reached the point where the intellectual curiosity among computer scientists has been aroused. (read more)
Chris Bishop is an e-business strategist at IBM and he has a passion to keep abreast of the latest in e-business technology advances. He and I spent an hour late last year talking about the future of the Internet and Chris published the discussion on an IBM intranet site. He titled the interview "Find A Way To Go Faster!", and made it available for sharing here on patrickWeb.
CB: What are you currently telling business leaders about where future value lies in evolving Internet technologies?
JP: A lot of big changes are being driven by the Internet. It is causing a rebirth of ideas that had formerly been impractical. An idea - no matter where it comes from - can be accessible immediately. Leaders of institutions such as hospitals, schools, government should be envisioning the concept of modeling the end result and then reverse engineering to build systems which make that happen. In business, we had had the barter system & give me cow and I’ll give you some grain& . Then the concept of mercantile exchange appeared and then business processes that evolved in silos. Now we are talking about integration of processes. I feel that too many companies are focused on the end state, and are ignoring the current day to day challenges around what they could be doing right now to be a more effective e-institution. (read more)
Sanjog Aul is the host of the AVVAL Radio Talk Show on Technology. The current series is entitled "Managing Technology The Right Way!", and I spent an hour talking with Sanjog this past Friday morning. We talked about blogging, WiFi, and generally about the future of the Internet. I enjoyed the discussion and unlike the last time, there was no power failure! The archive of Friday's show is now live. If you are interested, just click on the listen link.
Someone recently said that using Google has added 20 points to our IQ. Other than using Google, however, most of us use a browser the same way we used it ten years ago. We type a url and wait for the web server to return the requested page to us. Opera Software ASA is changing the model. In partnership with IBM Corporation, Opera has developed a new browser that will allow you to use your voice to request web pages -- and the browser will talk back to you. "Good morning, John. Where would you like to go". "Weather Underground", I might say. "What city?", the browser replies. "Phoenix, Arizona", I say. "Sunny and 92 degrees today. Tomorrow will be partly cloudy and 88. The next day will be sunny and 85". "Anything else?", the Opera browser says. "Technology News", I say. "Headlines", the browser responds. After reading the top ten stories, the browser says, "More headlines?". "Full story, I say". "Which story?". "Opera". The browser says...
"Opera Sings with IBM's Speech Technology:
New version of Opera Embeds ViaVoice from IBM"
"Oslo, Norway and San Francisco, CA - Mar. 23, 2004"
"Today at AVIOS, SpeechTEK 2004, Opera Software announced the upcoming release of a multimodal desktop browser that incorporates IBM's Embedded ViaVoice speech technology. By leveraging IBM's voice libraries in this version of Opera, users can navigate, request information and even fill in Web forms using speech and other forms of input in the same interaction". (read full press release)
One of the ways that you can tell if a new Internet technology is going to be successful is to look for skepticism. When people begin to say the hype exceeds the reality, it means we are on the way toward the reality exceeding the hype. I am not referring to new business models that are going to make water run uphill, but rather to fundamental technologies such as the Internet itself, the Web, Java, Linux, WiFi, and others. All of those were discounted in the early days. Blogging has now entered the phase when we can be sure it will be enormously successful and change the fundamentals of how information is written, distributed, syndicated, and archived. How do I know? A recent story by The Associated Press proclaimed that "Blogging still infrequent, study finds". The study found that somewhere between2 percent and 7 percent of adult Internet users in the United States are bloggers. The implication of the story was that "only" 2-7 percent of Internet users were blogging. I find the 2-7 percent number extremely encouraging. (read more)
Recently I spoke with Munir Kotadia at ZDNet UK in London about the future of the Internet -- a subject I love to talk about. One of Munir's questions was "How long can Microsoft dominate the browser market?". "Browser market", I said? Sure, if you look just at PC's you would wonder why anyone would try to compete with a monopoly that has 95 percent of the market. However, if you look at the market for Internet devices with browsers on them -- including televisions, PDA's, phones, automobiles and virtually any kind of device that has a chip on it and a network connection -- then you get a much different picture. How many devices will have a chip and a network connection? All of them -- billions of them. Basically, everything becomes a computer on the Web and then no one company dominates that market. There is a huge opportunity for innovation and we are the very beginning of the potential. This is why I am optimistic about Opera Software.
The other topic Munir asked about was why Linux is so popular? There is a perception that Linux is about "free", but my belief is that Linux is about "freedom". I got some feedback from a few readers who said I was more than a little off base with my Linux comments. Maybe, but it is what I believe. It is not about free because it is not free, no software is free. There are implicit costs involved in using any software. The issue is about freedom -- for people to make the choices they want to make with the software they use and to have the partnerships they want with other vendors.
The four Demo panelists did a very nice job of explaining their points of view about blogging. They talked about how blogging can fit into one's personal life, benefit a small business, cope in a major corporation, and streamline the flow of information from blogs to your PC or handheld. Thirty minutes was not nearly enough time to explore all the issues and we wanted to allow some time for audience questions. Not surprisingly, both Bobby Orbach and Amy Wohl asked about how the business model for blogging and how blogging enables money making. Certainly these are fair questions. In fact there are many unanswered questions about blogging just as their were many about the Web ten years ago. Blogging provides new protocols for creating, distributing, publishing syndicating, and reading information. Is there money to be made from protocols? Probably not. Is there money in html or http? Not per se. The money comes from ecosystem; i.e. it comes from content, transactions, and commerce that will be facilitated in new ways using blogging. We are 2% of the way into what blogging has in store for us.
At the Demo lunch there were tent cards on a number of the tables indicating a subject matter from the conference so people could congregate and share. Buzz Bruggerman and Greg Reinacker and I sat at the "blogging" table. Doc Searles was there blogging on his Apple ibook with the 17" screen and G5 chip. We all engaged Dave Sifry, CEO of Technorati, to learn about how he is providing real-time searching of blogs. If you have any doubts about how fast blogging is growing, take a look at his site.
I knew that eventually competition would begin to take
hold in broadband. I first wrote about this in a
reflection May 12, 1998 -- and must admit that my forecast was a bit premature. But now,
at last, it is happening. At last year's Vortex Conference, Larry
Babbio, vice chairman of Verizon, said
that they had reduced their monthly DSL fee by $15 and that the reduction was
"not promotional". Surely, the cable companies will not stand by and
lose market share. Direct TV is aggressively advertising broadband Internet
access via satellite. Having multiple competing sources of broadband will result in lower prices and higher speeds. That is how free markets work. What we need
is even more competition -- and the electric utilities are about to offer it. In this morning's New York Times, a story by Stephen Labation, F.C.C. Begins Rewriting Rules on Delivery of the Internet, described how the Federal Communications Commission is devising new rules which will allow electric utilities to offer broadband over their power grids. (read more)
Rupert Goodwin over at ZDNet UK in London poked a little fun at me in Rupert Goodwins' Diary. His story, dated 10/2/2004, isn't really from October like it looks. Not only do they drive on the wrong side of the road over there, but they also put their months and days backwards. Sorry Rupert, I couldn't resist. Rupert was actually very kind to me in his story which correctly pointed out that sometimes technology fails at the most embarrassing times. In this case, I was talking to his colleague,
Munir Kotadia, who wanted to discuss my views about network security, Windows, Linux, Opera, and other Internet technology related topics. Munir had sent me an email and asked if we could talk. I called him in London using my packet8.net IP phone. It is generally highly reliable -- had a flawless and high quality call with Oslo, Norway this morning -- but not always. Sometimes there is a pause. Not exactly sure why. The path from the Radio Shack cordless phone to the packet8 MTA to my LAN to my hub to my cable modem to Comcast to their router to the Internet to who knows how many hops across the Net to London to a PBX to Munir's phone has a lot of possible points of failure. Possible, but not likely, it could even have been Munir's phone. (read more)
I am very fond of Opera. Yes, I love Così fan tutte (and Mozart's other 19 operas) but that is not what I am referring to. The other Opera in my life is a company in Oslo, Norway that has created browser software which is an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The name of the company is Opera Software ASA . Like many of you, I have had a long history with browsers. In the summer of 1994, a team of four brilliant programmers at IBM developed a browser called the "Web Explorer". It was integrated with OS/2 which was the best desktop operating system in the market at that time. It was also integrated with the IBM Global Network which was the best Internet Service Provider at the time. Why OS/2 is not talked about much anymore and the Web Explorer nor the IBM Global Network exist today is a long story. It is a book someone will surely write at some point
Putting history aside, the best browser available today is Opera and using it is a joy because of it's many innovations. I am very proud that as of this week I will be a member of the board of directors of Opera Software ASA.
I was really looking forward to the interview with Sanjog Aul on the AVVAL Internet radio talk show. We were just getting warmed up and starting into a discussion about blogging when the line dropped. Sanjog and I are both embarrassed and apologize to all the listeners. The talkshow was being produced by BusinessAmerica Radio, a SurfNet® Media Group, Inc. station located in Tempe, Arizona. The station engineer called me and said that someone had driven a truck into a power transformer and knocked out electricity across a large area. (read more)
The Upcoming Engagements page has been updated. Looks like this is going to be a busy first quarter of the new year. In addiition to the various conferences, there are quite a few board and committee meetings. The next event will be the AVVAL Radio Talk Show with host Sanjog Aul. Sanjog has outlined a long list of questions about the future of the Internet and I am looking forward to discussing them with him. The broadcast will be at 11 AM EST on Friday.
Network World asked me to write an 850 word summary of my view about the future of the Internet. The story appears in the November 10 issue of the magazine and also online at NetworkWorldFusion. They named the story "The Ultimate Internet". I don't know if "ultimate" is the right term, and 850 words isn't much space to describe something as broad and deep as the evolution of the Internet, but I did my best. There were some other things in the news and a few thoughts I wanted to share. (read more)
I
was very fortunate to be in Malaysia this week. It was a long trip --
28 hours to get from my house to the J.W. Marriott in downtown Kuala Lumpur
-- but one which enabled me to make many new acquaintances and to learn much
more about Asia. According to the Magellan
SporTrakColor handheld GPS,
the latitude is 2 degrees 50.526 minutes North and the longitude is 101
degrees 42.399 minutes East. That makes it 9,368 miles from home. The first
leg of the flight went from JFK in New York to Frankfurt, Germany. It took
about 6.5 hours in the air. The flight got in at 4:30 am EST which was then
10:30 am in Germany. After an hour or so layover for fuel and crew change
we re-boarded the same Boeing 747 to head for Singapore.
The path was a southeastern
arc heading across eastern Europe over Prague, various parts of what used
to be the USSR and
then across India, just below Delhi, and across the Bay of Bengal toward
Bangkok, Thailand. The flight continued over Phuket, west of Ho Chi Minh
City, Vietnam, over much of Malaysia and into Singapore. (read
more)
The
the future of "long
distance" is getting more clear each day. Yesterday's Wall
Street Journal carried two stories, that appeared as unrelated, but which I
believe are actually part of the same overall picture. One was about number
portability and the other about WiFi roaming. (read
more)
There are many tumultous issues ahead for "long distance".
Not the least of which is that the term "long" won't mean anything. Hard
to believe, but years ago, when the phone rang from Aunt Sally calling from
thousands of miles away, the whole house would turn silent. "Quiet", people
would say, "I am on long distance". It was something special. Sometimes the
quality of the call was not that good, and every minute was precious -- and
expensive. As you have seen in other stories here on the subject, long distance
is very inexpensive when using Internet telephony. Rates are begiing to come
down as more and moe alternatives to traditional "long distance" service
emerge. One thing that is not going down is the taxes associated with telephone
service. (read
more)
There
has been a lot of interest and feedback from readers about the recent patrickWeb
stories about "long
distance". Most are saying, "where can I get it?",
but others are saying "not
so fast". This is understandable given that we are beginning to go through
a very disruptive period with regard to telephony. We are 5% of the way into
what is in store for us. One concern was raised by Tony Paulson who pointed
out that 911 service is not available via the new SIP services. Another issue
is being able to retain your existing phone number and avoid having to have two
phone systems in your home -- one connected to the local phone company and another
plugged into your cable or DSL router. Thanks to Bob Ishida in Tokyo for telling
me about how Yahoo! Japan Broadband has
solved both of these problems in Japan. (read
more)
Nothing Cold about Internet Connectivity In Iceland
Reykjavik,
Iceland may soon become the first city in which every home is connected to
the Internet with fiber optic cable. While many in the world still
have analog dial-up connections or no connections, Reykjavik is about to
take a quantum leap. According to Gudjon
Mar Gudjonsson,
a consultant in the broadband
industry who lives there, the icy capital city of Iceland has
an unsurpassed fiber infrastructure. Apparently, the city's utility company
and the formerly state owned telecom operator are competing to build what
may be the world's first city with "Fiber-To-The-Home " for every
one of it's households. The full story will be presented at a conference
-- Digital
Reykjavik -- sometime before yearend. Gudjon saysthis time of the year
is a wonderful time to visit our Iceland. You can check the forcast below.
There
was an excellent piece in the New
York Times Magazine today called "The
Sharer" written by David Diamond. He had a Q&A interchange with
Linus Torvalds, the father
of Linux. The final question he asked was
about Linux being the nemesis of Microsoft. The answer from Linus will be a
classic. "I just can't see myself in the position of the nemesis, since
I just don't care enough. To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy
something, don't you? Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just
be a completely unintentional side effect". See the full
Q&A at The New York Times.
(read
more)
In
spite of my enthusiasm for VoIP,
I realize that it will take some time for it to become pervasive. Not decades
-- but not in the next twelve months either. I was experiencing some sluggish
network performance on the home
LAN today and decided to re-boot the router. This is something I don't do
very often (wish I could say the same for Windows XP). Later I realized that
my Packet8SIP
phone service was not working and then it dawned on me that I also had to re-boot
the Packet8 "terminal
adapter" -- a small box that connects to the home LAN. It wasn't a
big deal to unplug and replug the device and get things working again but it
got me thinking about some of the things we take for granted with the POTS
(plain old telephone system). (read
more)
There
is a lot of feedback from readers about the last few stories where I discussed
"long distance". Some are saying, "yeah verily", others
are saying "not so fast". This is understandable given that we are
beginning to go through a very disruptive period with regard to telephony. We
are 5% of the way into what is in store for us. (read
more).
What
is "long distance"? I would define a long distance as something that
takes a long time to cover; e.g. flying
to Singapore requires going a long distance. It takes more than 24 hours
to get there. When it comes to telecommunications, however, the term "long
distance" has little meaning. Packets of ones and zeroes travel over the
Internet at nearly the speed of light. It takes a quarter of a second or less
to send a packet of one thousand zeroes and ones from New York to California.
To send the packet to Singapore might take a half of a second. In both cases,
depending on conditions, the time might be different by plus or minus a quarter
of a second. In other words there isn't much difference. So why is the cost
of a telephone call different by one or more orders of magnitude? The answer
lies in part in the fact that people have not had an alternative to expensive
long distance services. That is no longer the case. (read
more)
The
6:25 AM train ride to Grand
Central Station was uneventful, although I have to admit that it was hard
not to think about the possibilities on this September 11. A short walk lead
to the security desk at JP Morgan Chase
on Park
Avenue. Then a bag check (no temperature was taken as
in Singapore) and up to the 49th floor for the Executive Breakfast of the
New York New Media Association (NYNMA).
There were seventy-five or so in attendance. After my fifteen minute presentation
on "The Future Of The Internet", I introduced Chris Forbes who is
CEO of Knovel Corporation (where I am a
director). Chris gave an excellent presentation on how Knovel, as an information
service provider, is leveraging the productivity of engineers and applied scientists.
We then had a Q&A session -- and the audience was not shy. (read
more)
My
friend and colleague Joichi Ito and I had
been chatting sporadically over a several week period via instant messaging.
One day we decided we should talk via voice and I gave him a call that evening
around 9 PM. The monthly invoice from SNET/SBC
just arrived. The call to Joi was 27 minutes and the cost was $34.02. That computes
to $1.26 per minute. I didn't think to use Net2Phone.
A few days later I called a colleague in Singapore, but this time I used my
Net2Phone account. It was a short call but, even so, the cost was only fourteen
cents This encouraged me to check on what the rates to Japan would be. Using
Net2Phone to call Japan costs $.059 per minute if calling a land line or $.29
to call a cell phone. The SNET/SBC charge was 23 to 43 times higher. We are
not talking about 23 to 43% higher, we are talking about 23
to 43 times higher. It costs no more to visit a web site in
Japan than one in New York. Why should it cost 20+ times more to make a phone
call to Japan than to New York? It shouldn't -- and that is why the telecommunications
industry still has some challenging days ahead. (read
more)
Thanks to all for the feedback on the photo gallery. The albums and pictures are now all moved to the new server and all the links are updated. Thanks also to those who helped out with tips on how to do some of this and to the team at Gallery for doing such a great job with their latest release.
I
offer my apology for the photo gallery problems on my website over the past
week. I am in the process of changing my hosting partner and the transition
has been a bit more difficult than I expected. In retrospect I should have done
more planning and testing. I am getting things under control now. There are
still a few loose ends, but most things are now working. I really appreciate
the feedback from people, such as Chuch Brownstein at CNRI
and Jean-Yves Stervinou, Consultant
en Nouvelles Technologies Web, who have pointed out specific broken links or
errors. Over the years I have been very fortunate to get this kind of input
to keep me on my toes! Building and managing a website is a continuous
learning experience. (read
more)
Convergence
as a technology concept has been around for decades. Many have predicted the
convergence of electronics and entertainment, of PC's and TV's, and more recently
of WiFi and cellular. All of these areas are in fact undergoing various degrees
of convergence but there is another area that many are not as familiar with.
It is called ENUM. The Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF) issued a "request for comment" on
ENUM (RFC 2916) in September
2000. Basically, ENUM is a protocol that will make it possible to converge the
Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN)
and the Internet. In other words, a telephone number can get you to a Web service
-- telephone number in, URL out. The idea can be extremely useful when you consider
that most telephones are limited to twelve keys on a keypad. Ever try to enter
your alphanumeric login ID and password to a web site on a cell phone or Personal
Digital Assistant? It is next to impossible! The biggest impact of ENUM will
probably be for Voice
Over IP (VoIP). In fact, it could be the tipping point. ENUM is a really
big deal. (read
more)
The
Vatican Library is
home for many of the world's rarest books and documents.The library has more
than 150,000 manuscripts, including the four oldest surviving manuscripts of
the Roman poet Virgil dating from the fourth and fifth century AD; and the oldest
known manuscript of the Bible, written in 350 AD. There are also more than a
million books, including 8,000 published during the first 50 years of the printing
press. Virtually all civilizations and cultures in the history of humanity are
represented somewhere in the Vatican Library. The wealth of content is phenomenal
and scholars from all over the world are deeply interested in studying it in
detail. The result will be an advancement in the general understanding of the
history of the world. That is the good news. The bad news is that due to the
cost of travel and the physical limitations of the Library to accommodate visiting
scholars, only about 2,000 scholars per year can actually visit. Fortunately,
a number of technical collaborations have focused on how to both
preserve the treasures of the Library and make them more accessible to scholars.
(read
more)
Japan's
largest national research organization has ordered an IBM eServer Linux supercomputer
that will deliver more than 11 trillion calculations per second, making it the
world's most powerful Linux-based supercomputer. It will join other Linux supercomputers
on the Top 500 List.The new supercomputer
is planned to be integrated with other non-Linux systems to form a massive,
distributed computing grid - enabling collaboration between corporations, academia
and government to support various research including grid technologies, life
sciences, bio-informatics and nanotechnology. The system, with a total of 2,636
processors, will include 1,058 IBM
eServer 325 systems. The powerful new supercomputer will help Japan's National
Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), well known
worldwide for its leading research in grid computing technologies. This situation
is yet one more example of the rise of the Penguin. (read
more)
Shortly
after September 21st, 2001, more Americans
flags began to appear than ever --it was obviously a good idea. It always
feels good to ride through the small towns of America on a motorcycle and see
an American flag on every house and telephone pole. I decided to attach flags
to my motorcycles
and found some nice ones at a local hardware store. They lasted for quite a
while, but eventually the poor stitching and meager attachment to a wooden stick
were bound to fail. One day, I got off the bike and there was a flagpole, but
no flag.
(read
more)
I am very fond of Opera. Yes, I love Cos� fan tutte (and Mozart's other 19 operas) but that is not what I am referring to. The Opera I am fascinated with at the moment is the browser alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer called Opera. Like many of you, I have had a long history with browsers. In the summer of 1994, a team of four brilliant programmers from IBM developed a browser called the "Web Explorer". It was integrated with OS/2 which was the best desktop operating system in the market at that time. It was also integrated with the IBM Global Network which was the best Internet Service Provider at the that time. Why OS/2 is not talked about much anymore and the Web Explorer nor the IBM Global Network exist today is a long story. It is a book someone will surely write at some point. Putting history aside, the best browser available today is Opera and I really enjoy using it. (read more)
I continue to believe that the only way to beat the spam problem is through the use of technology, as I have written before. I don't think the proposed "Do Not Spam" registry has any chance of working. This is partly because of the complexity of the management and security issues that would have to be addressed and partly because of the "exceptions" that would get baked into the legislation. As a proof point of that concern, take a look at the new National Do Not Call Registry that was launched today. The site says that "Most telemarketers cannot call your telephone number if it is in the Do Not Call Registry". When you click on "most telemarketers" you quickly see the problem -- exceptions. (read more)
We all wanted the sun to come out and the potential for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) to go away. We got what we asked for. Instead of what we thought was unbearable chill and drizzle, we now have something that truly is unbearable -- a heat index of 100 degrees. All things considered, we are very lucky. The authentication working group met at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Monday. I wish I could report that all is well and that we made great progress in moving the ball forward in the quest for digital id's, authentication, PKI (public key authentication) and all the attendant benefits. (read more)
Some people suffer from symptoms of depression during the winter months, with symptoms subsiding during the spring and summer months. This may be a sign of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD is a mood disorder associated with depression episodes and related to seasonal variations of light. I think the 40+ rainy days out of the last 50 days may be inflicting off-season SAD. According to the National Mental Health Association, SAD was first noted before 1845. There are many symptoms ascribed to SAD and likewise many drugs prescribed for treatment. In my case, I admit to being affected by the lack of sunshine but am hoping that my trip to Washington, D.C. tomorrow will coincide with a return to more sunny days. I will be attending a meeting of the authentication working group at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. We really need digital id's and I am hopeful that tomorrow's meeting will move the ball forward.
WiFi is such a clean and user-friendly name. WiFi stands for "wireless fidelity" and it is based on a standard called 802.11 -- but who cares? It is becoming a household name, more and more available, and extremely useful. The information technology and telecommunications industries often get enamored with the technical name or the name of a standard and then these "tech-names" take on a life of their own -- even though they may be next to impossible to remember, spell, or understand. An example is the technology used in the Sprint PCS wireless service which I use with my ThinkPad. It is referred to as 1xRTT. Somewhat like R2D2 except that I think most people know what R2D2 is. (read more)
Writing papers is always fun and I was privileged that the Design Management Institute asked me to write one for their Design Management Journal. The DMI Journal is "devoted to articles and case studies exploring how design � in products, communication, and environments � is an essential resource, a component of every organization that can be effectively managed to make important contributions to the bottom line and to long-term success". The current issue, "Fusing Design, Strategy and Technology: Insights from the Frontiers of Design and Design Management" (Vol. 14, No. 2, Spring 2003) discusses how new technologies and business strategies are transforming how we design, what we design, and the ways in which we communicate design content. Addressing this metamorphosis, a number of contributors demonstrated that the Web can streamline communications. I had given a talk about The Future of The Internet at a DMI Conference in October 2002 in Chatam, Massachusetts and this paper reflects what I had to say. (read more)
I knew that eventually competition would begin to take hold in broadband. I first wrote about this in a reflection May 12, 1998 -- and must admit I was a bit premature. But now, at last, it is happening. This morning at Vortex 2003 in Laguna Niguel, Larry Bibbio, vice chairman of Verizon, said that they have reduced their monthly DSL fee by $15 and that the reduction was "not promotional". Surely, the cable companies will not stand by and lose market share. Direct TV is aggressively advertising broadband internet access via satellite. Prices will come down and speeds will go up. What we need is even more competition and the electric utilities are about to offer it. In Pennsylvania, PPL Telecom has begun to charge their subscribers for "Broadband over Power Line" service beginning May 1, 2003. (read more)
I made it to Philadelphia for my connecting flight and am sitting in the gate area. There are no airline clubs or lounges in the communter airline section of the airport, but the Sprint PCS CDMA card in my ThinkPad works very well. In fact I have not been to a place yet where it didn't work. I haven't used dial-up once since I got the CDMA card. It isn't precisely "always on" and it sure isn't WiFi but I am getting hooked on it as a very good alternative to have.
The Federal Trade Commission spam Forum in Washington this morning was quite ineteresting. The room was packed. Two FTC commissioners spoke -- one suggesting caution on any legislative initiatives and the other saying "it can't hurt". I think it can hurt and likely will if passed. I spoke on a panel along with seven attorneys. All seven urged Federal legislation. I was a lone voice; speaking out for patience to allow for technology to address the problem. (read more)
Nothing like being at Washington National Airport on a Friday afternoon waiting for a flight. I have to admit that having the Sprint PCS CDMA card in my ThinkPad makes it more bearable. WiFi will be everywhere but it isn't yet. Dial-up is hardly an acceptable alternative. Sprint's "3G" service *is* a good alternative (see "Always On - Almost"). It isn't as fast as they claim but I really like it because you don't have to connect any wires. When travelling I leave the Sprint card in the ThinkPad's pcmcia slot. It finds a signal and you click connect. That is all there is to it. In a few seconds you are in "always on" mode. If it loses the signal it reconnects automatically. Not as good as WiFi but a very good alternative to have.
When I entered engineering school almost forty years ago (is that possible?), I used a slide rule and engineering reference manuals. I think of that as the first of three generations of using engineering and scientific data. The second generation was web-based data with PC's for standalone and separate analysis. Knovel Corporation (pronouced nah-vil) has introduced the third generation -- "Knovelized" data with deep search and a high degree of interactivity. Knovel brings boring reference manuals to life and in the process saves engineers and scientists many hours of effort. It is a good example of an information service that is available "on demand" from anywhere -- and anywhere has new meaning, thanks to WiFi. The Danbury News-Times ran a nice story about Knovel in the business section today.
Disclosure: I am an investor in Knovel Corporation and a member of the board of directors.
I am just now back in the country and will get to Scottsdale for PC Forum later this afternoon. PC Forum is an important conference -- great way to stay in touch with many friends in the industry and stay abreast of the latest thinking by many industry leaders. I'll have more to say about where I have been and about PC Forum later in the week.
Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold is a really good book -- just added it to my books list. Howard did a wonderful job of painting a vision for the future based on what is happening with WiFi and other disruptive technologies. He interviewed many visionaries and practitioners and then incorporated their thoughts into the book in a very nicely integrated way. I highly recommend this book.
I appreciate the feedback that my last story helped clarify GSM and SIM for some readers. The main question I am getting is about what phone I use personally. For most of 2001 and 2002 I used the Kyocera Smartphone with service provided by Verizon. The Smartphone is an excellent phone but the screen is very difficult to read unless you have excellent lighting. I now use a Samsung i330. The 256 color graphic LCD is brilliant and easy to read under any circumstances. I also prefer having the single touchscreen with no lids or hinges. Like the Smartphone it has the Palm OS built in and allows me to keep my address book, calendar, to do list, and numerous documents synchronized with my ThinkPad. Verizon has the best coverage where I live but they don't support the i330. My new service provider is Sprint PCS. When out of the country I use a Motorola L Series+GSM phone with service provided by T-Mobile. Someday I will have the "wifi global phone".
A fellow director at a recent board meeting asked me what phone I would recommend he buy that could be used anywhere in the world. My answer was that there isn't one today but soon the answer will be a WiFi phone. More on that shortly. The closest thing available today would be a phone which is supported by T-Mobile. The question my friend should have asked is what service provides cell phone coverage in the most places around the world. The secondary question would be what phones are available that use that service. T-Mobile operates the largest all digital, nationwide wireless network based on GSM -- Global System for Mobile Communications . T-Mobile covers most of the U.S. (more than 8,000 cities) and because it is based on GSM, it also works in 179 countries. GSM is the most widely used digital wireless standard in the world with more than 700 million subscribers.
It is often said that GSM is far superior to the various other cell phone provider choices in America. For most people the major benefit of ubiquitous GSM service would be the ability to pick whatever kind of phone you want to use. With other cellular plans you can't do that. You must first pick the service provider in your area and then find out which phones they support. This can be extremely limiting, especially if you like to have the latest and greatest phone. (read more)
There are many ways to get feedback and keep up with what is going on in the world. Reading weblogs and newspapers provides a lot. So does giving speeches and getting feedback from Q&A sessions or talking with members of the press. Another way is to participate on boards. On non-profit boards you can contribute a great deal. You can also contribute to the growth of companies by sharing your experience and ideas. Profit or non-profit, you also learn a great deal in the process of serving. I feel quite fortunate to have just joined the board of directors of Jupitermedia (see press release). I have known Alan Meckler, chairman and ceo of Jupitermedia since 1994 when he was running the Internet World conferences. He has consistently had a vision of what was coming over the horizon and has bulit businesses to take advantage of it. I am really pleased that Jupitermedia is one of my affiliations. (read more)
This year was my eleventh visit with the Danbury Area Society. For the last eight years my talks have been about The Future of the Internet. It is always a please to speak there because the Q&A session goes for a long time. The audience always has a lot of questions and I enjoy staying to hear them and do my best to answer them. Good questions keep you on your toes and provide a good sanity check on your speaking topic. I always get emails from the audience too -- and this I also appreciate. One solution proposed at the Spam Roundtable in Honolulu this past week was that email programs be setup so that you only receive emails from people who are in your address book. This would definitely eliminate your spam. It would also eliminate hearing new ideas, meeting new people, and getting feedback. That is a tradeoff I for one am not willing to make. Here is an article about what I had to say at the December 2002 DACS meeting. (read more)
On December 12, David Kirkpatrick, Senior Editor, Internet & Technology, Fortune Magazine, sought answers from a panel before an audience at New School University in Manhattan. My point of view was that not only will technology generally be a renewed boost to the economy but that the Internet in particular will be the key driver -- since we are only two percent of the way into what the Internet has in store for us. I also pointed out that the that most of the dot.com companies that failed went under because their business plans made no sense, not because of anything to do with the Internet. I also talked about the profound impact that WiFi is having.
Other members of the panel included Bob Savage of Microsoft, Sven Travis, Associate Provost for Technology at Parsons School of Design and Associate Provost for New Technology at New School University; Gregory Brill, president and founder of Infusion Development Corp, an IT training and consulting firm; and George Wood, Senior Engineer, Education Technical Operations, Apple Corporation. It was a lively discussion. (read more)
Just back from a wintery motorcycle ride. It was beyond cold. The Widder gloves and vest do a good job but when the wind howls across your chin, you can really feel it. It is best to wear a thin head covering that covers the neck and chin (there is a name for it that I don't recall) but I forgot to take it along. Riding is a bit tricky on the roads too -- a lot of sand from recent snowfall -- but safe if you take it easy. I am looking forward to giving a talk about "The Future of The Internet" tonight at the Danbury Area Computer Society. It is a treat to see so many friends there every year.
In Net Attitude, there is a chapter with a lot of discussion about "Fast". The world record for high-speed network applications has jumped by a factor of more than five since the book was released in late 2001. At last week's Supercomputing 2002 conference there was an application with a peak data transfer rate of 16.8 billion bits per second, more than 30,000 times faster than a typical home connection of 56,000 bits per second. Mike Nelson at IBM was at the Super Computing 2002 conference in Baltimore and saw a demo from one of the "Bandwidth Challenge" entrants. They were able to generate massive, high-resolution graphical images on a system 3,000 miles away at Lawrence Livermore and get the same performance as if the software was running on a PC at the conference.
A lot has changed since the Fall of 1998 when I wrote "Will Our Media Wear Out?". In addition to "floppy" diskettes of the 8" and 5.25" variety, 3.5" diskettes, and cassette tapes of various sizes, most of us have also accumulated piles of CDs, and now DVDs. In time they will all be artifcats of the past.
This past summer I converted more than 400 CDs that I collected over the years into a MP3 digital collection which I can now select and play from a Lansonic digital audio system. It is clear that in time it will be just as easy to convert DVDs into digital format. It can be done already but it is not as easy as with music. I decided I don't want to go through the painstaking process when the time comes and so I signed up for Netflix. (read more)
Thanks to JY Stervinou for commenting on my "Will Our Media Wear Out?" story. He pointed out that Dan Bricklin, co-creator of VisiCalc, has written a story that is relevant and related. It is called "Copy Protection Robs The Future". This is an excellent read.
This was written in October, 1998 but working on my photo gallery reminded me of it.
Ever think about media wearing out? I was cleaning out the basement the other day and I came across a box of 5.25" diskettes. Lots of them. They date back to 1979 when I had a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III. The diskettes stored 80,000 bytes! Seemed like a lot at the time. Are these diskettes worn out? Well, who knows? Probably not but they are "effectively" worn out because I can't imagine where I would find a diskette *drive* that could read them. I also found a box of cassette tapes that I had used as data storage on my Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1. Fat chance of retrieving any data from them. How about 3.5" diskettes? Sure they are ubiquitous today but how about ten years from now? How about 35 mm slides? I don't know the life of the slides themselves but like the Radio Shack diskettes, I suspect the limiting factor will be the life of the devices with which to retrieve the "data". There will likely come a day when the slides will be fine but there will be nobody who knows how to repair the carousel or obtain parts for the projector. There are countless other scenarios of similar ilk. (read more)
Photo Gallery Updated and Will Our Media Wear Out?
The Photo Gallery started out as part of ibm.com in 1995. Having a photo gallery is commonplace today but back in 1995 it was somewhat unique. Sharing pictures with my family, friends and colleagues from around the world has always been rewarding. The original gallery was fairly crude but then Dipen Mehta, of the IBM webAhead team, created a Lotus Domino gallery that was a farily easy to use. Then Dipen moved on and nobody knew how the gallery worked. I searched high and low for a simple way to manage a large group (more than 3,000) of digital pictures. After experimenting with various galleries, the best one turned out to be Gallery. Gallery is a very slick program -- free, open source, and loaded with features. The management is all via the web exept for a Java applet for rapid uploading of pictures. The whole process is quite intuitive and easy to use. I think this will be my long term solution as long as they continue to improve it. It took me quite a while to get all the pictures converted but it should be much easier to add new pictures from now on. Thanks for your patience and your feedback during the process. I hope you enjoy the Gallery.
Reto Sigl, Director of IT at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory took some pictures at the recent IBM CIO Conference held at DisneyLand Paris. He used his Sony-Ericsson T68i mobile phone (with plug-in camera). The speakers pictures were not very clear due to lighting conditions and digital zoom, but otherwise very good photography for a telephone! (read more)
Will cellular merge with Wi-Fi? Seems likely to me. The 1,400 public hot spot locations are expected to grow to about 42,000 by 2006. This growth presents the opportunity to create a national wireless network that could provide both voice and Internet connectivity using WiFi standards and a plethora of new WiFi technology for routing, meshing, hopping, range extending, and other functions. The telephone network and the cellular systems as we know them may be subsumed by the many initiatives that are underway.
After enjoying the use of high speed Internet connectivity at the Admiral's Club, Starbucks, or maybe the local Subway sandwich shop, it is very easy to get spoiled. The more often we find connectivity, the more we expect it at other places. Fortunately, innovation is alive and well in the WiFi space. Two recent developments portend where things are going. (read more)
The Photo Gallery was part of ibm.com from 1995 until 2002 when I merged it with patrickWeb. It has been a great way to share pictures from around the world with my friends and colleagues. The original gallery was fairly crude but then Dipen Mehta, of the IBM webAhead team, made a native Domino gallery. The good news was that it a slick way for me to manage pictures but the bad news is that Dipen moved on, I retired, and nobody knows how it works! I have looked high and low for a simple way to manage my existing pictures and add new ones. One excellent tool I found was Gazo and although, I was pleased with it, I have now found something even better called Gallery. Gallery is really cool. It is free, open source, and loaded with features. The management is all via the web and it is quite intuitive and easy to use. I think this will be my long term solution. Until I get everything converted there are going to be two galleries. Since there are nearly 3,000 pictures, this is going to take awhile. Thanks for your patience and your feedback.
You will find quite a few postings here on patrickWeb about WiFi. My enthusiasm continues to grow as WiFi continues to gain momentum. The technical name for WiFI is 802.11b. That is the standard from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE, of which I am proud to be a senior member). 802.11b will soon seem primitive! (read more)
It wasn't my plan for the blog to be a WiFi blog -- there are so many other things to write about in the world of Internet Technology. However, my enthusiasm for WiFi grows each day as I hear from readers. Anders Jacobsen, a Norwegian subscriber to my weblog's RSS newsfeed, sent me some additional WiFi resources I was not aware of. Wireless communities are popping up all over the world -- it is not an American phenomenon. (read more)
C|NET ran a story called, "Wi-Fi to climb aboard modems", that describes how Wi-Fi chips for wireless home networks will seeon become integrated with broadband modems. Communications chipmaker Conexant Systems announced Tuesday that it is adding Intersil Wi-Fi chips to the semiconductors it builds for high-speed cable or DSL modems. This is clearly the next step in the evolution of Wi-Fi. Not long ago people with home LANs had (and many still do) a cable or DSL modem plus a router to make the Internet connection available to other PCs in their house plus a wireless access point to extend the connection to laptops in the backyard or wherever. Three boxes. By the end of this year it sounds like there will be one box that does it all. There are already nearly twenty million homes and offices with WiFi. The momentum will surely accelerate even beyond the current frenetic pace.
Matt Gould at Megabeam dropped ma a note to remind me that WiFi is not an American thing. Megabeam is building a pan-European wireless hotspot network targeting business travelers at airports, hotels, train stations, and convention centers. Hotspots are up and running in both Milan and Rome airports and in key European business centers including London, Milan, Rome, Munich, Zurich and Amsterdam. The service will soon be available at 12 European airports with a total of 65 hotspots live by the end of the year. (read more)
There will be an Internet2 "Virtual Briefing", entitled "New Networks, Old Economy," on Friday, September 13, 2002, 1:00pm-2:30pm EST.
Presenters will discuss approaches for building advanced networks in a telecommunications environment that some believe is reverting to the models of the "Old Economy". The speakers will bring their various perspectives to an exploration of the fundamental changes in the telecom industry since the end of the "Internet boom" and will consider how the higher education community should respond. More information and netcasting options are here.
The latest addition to NewburyOpen.net is that they have made a "mobile" version of their wireless node that sits on top of one of their cars. They plan to park it next to various places every Sunday and provide free wireless Internet service in new locations every week. For their first day out it happens to be parked by a Starbucks, which is somewhat intentional since NewburyOpen.net wants to make the statement that free WiFi is the way to go, not $14 by the hour. (read more)
The momentum is building to create community area networks everywhere! My first taste of this was during Subway Surfing and now it seems that each week I learn of something new. NewburyOpen.net -- on Newbury Street in Boston -- provides free high-speed WiFi Internet connections for Bostoners and travelers away from work or home -- at Internet-by-the-Hour stations at 252 Newbury Street and in cafes and shops on Newbury Street. (read more)
Thanks to David Singer, IBM Distinguished Engineer, Internet Technology at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California for telling me about a very interesting approach to reducing spam. It uses a statistical model and sounds like it could be quite effective. There is
Reuters reported that IBM is rolling out new technology that may be powerful enough to stop college students from bringing laundry home to mom and dad for the weekend. The system is called eSuds and it was developed by IBM and USA Technologies. Instead of the usual chasing all over to find quarters, this new system allows students to swipe a credit card or punch a code into their cell phones to pay for the washing machines or clothes dryers. (read more)
I arrived in Ocean City, New Jersey for a visit with some family on Wednesday night. After dinner it was time to check some email and things on the web so I got out my RJ-11 phone cable and plugged it into the phone jack in the wall. Then it occurred to me to try Boingo instead. (read more)
It was heartening to see the report by Danny Freedman on the AP wire that the Federal Communications Commission had issued a record fine of nearly $5.4 million against a company for sending "junk faxes" to businesses and consumers.The fine was levied against fax.com, a company based in Aliso Viejo, California. It was the largest fine ever by the commission for violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The law protects against unsolicited faxes, telemarketing calls and prerecorded messages. (read more)
This story puts spam in perspective -- a very negative one. I continue to be hopeful as I see more and more startup companies bring solutions to market.
There is a lot going on in the area of Digital Identity in both the private sector and in government. I recently posted a story about it. Seven power point presentations on the US initiative can be found here. There is also a recent paper on e-authentication.
A lot of interesting things come from IBM Research. Something new that I found particularly interesting is the IBM Multimodal Annotation Tool. The tool assists in annotating MPEG files with MPEG-7 meta data (both video and audio. Each shot in the video sequence can be annotated with static scene descriptions, key object descriptions, event descriptions, and other lexicon sets. Audio segments can be delimited and described as well. The annotated descriptions are stored as MPEG-7 descriptions in an XML file. The tool can also open MPEG-7 files in order to display the annotations for the corresponding MPEG file. (read more)
WiFi has captured my imagination and I have written a number of things about it here in the weblog. Today C|NET published a short story I wrote called Wi-Fi and free lunches. The feedback confirms the enthusiasm of many others.
Broadband service via either Cable or DSL is spreading around the world. However, there are many places where it is just not available. One of them is the Ruby Ranch neighborhood in Summit County, Colorado. Rather than wait until broadband service would be available -- which could be years -- the residents decided to take the matter into their own hands. (read more)
I got a lot of feedback on my short piece called Digital IDs: A Tool To Reduce Spam. Eric Norlin, Senior Editor at Digital ID World, told me about a conference coming up in October that sounds very interesting. Identity is destined to change the computing landscape and our personal interactions forever. Attendees will discuss and debate the technology and its social ramifications.
Thanks to Mike Nelson at IBM for finding a bad link to the the piece on spam in the reflection about Digital IDs. I am trying hard to clean up any errors I made while consolidating my web sites and importing weblog posts from my old system. Most all of the internal links are fixed but there may still be some external ones like the one Mike found. I really appreciate it when people tell me about an error on my site -- I try to do the same for others -- and I apologize for any inconvenience.
Network World conducted an interview in December 2001 about E-Business. This was the last interview I participated in prior to my retirement from IBM. I am re-posting this as part of my web site consolidation plan.
John Patrick, vice president of Internet technology, is one of the driving forces behind Big Blue's Linux and e-business push. He has also been instrumental in helping build IBM's alphaWorks Web site, the company's online research and development laboratory. Patrick, who's worked for IBM for more than 30 years, is an industry luminary and is the author of "Net Attitude," a book about making companies Web-savvy. Network World Senior Writer Kathleen Ohlson recently caught up with Patrick to talk about emerging technologies, Web services and security. (complete interview)
Every year for nine years it has been a great pleasure to visit with the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS) and discuss the future of technology. Danbury is near where I live and so it is a joy to be able to give a talk without having to travel the globe to get there. It is also a great audience -- they are incredibly interested in technology. The Q&A session is as much fun for me as it hopefully is for the audience. Jack Corcoran has written a kind review of the evening for the dacs.doc newsletter and the "electric" online version. Here are links to Jack's reviews for both this year and last year.
CFO Europe Selects Grid as a Top Technology of 2002
CFO Europe magazine selected Grid Computing as a Top Technology of 2002. In the story, the magazine reviews ten technologies which they believe to be most important. They say that IT budgets are tight, but there are some technologies that companies can�t ignore. Anthony Sibillin reveals what every savvy CFO should have on their radar screen.
I was pleased to be able to talk to CFO Europe about what IBM is doing in a number of key areas -- especially in Grid Computing -- and they included some of my comments in their story. (read more)
Computer Systems Policy Project Releases New Paper on Wireless Broadband
The Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP) has released its new paper, Building the Foundation of the Networked World: A Vision for 21st Century Wired and Wireless Broadband. Lou Gerstner, along with other CSPP CEOs, participated in meetings in late January 2002 to present the paper to Congressional leaders and to Vice President Cheney and other senior Administration officials. CSPP also held a press conference in Washington to release the paper. The group emphasized the need for policymakers to promote next-generation broadband deployment, both wired and wireless.
A press release summarizing the paper is available at:
Note: I originally posted this on ibm.com/patrick on February 7, 2002. I am in the process of consolidating my web sites and weblogs into one place here at patrickWeb. I appreciate your patience while I get this done.
In my book, Net Attitude, I asserted that the PC and the TV were not converging -- in fact I said I believed that they are diverging. John McAllaster is reading the book and gave me some excellent feedback. With John's permission I am posting his comments and also my reply to him. There is a lot more to say on the subject and I am working on it in a new book. I'll be posting things here as that unfolds. (read more)
I think by now we all know how fast WiFi is taking off. Rob Flickenger just published a very comprehensive article in PC Magazine. The most impressive link he referred to is Wireless Communities. I have written about the subject too. See "Subway Surfing".
I just visited a very interesting site called "did you ever wonder?". Some of the topics included "How to rebuild the surface of a cell?", "How soil keeps the world in balance?", "About the invisible marvels of the nanoworld?", and "How to carve with light?". Each month the site features new questions and new personalities.
I discoved the site in the Scout Report, which I have been reading the every weekend for quite a few years. It is really excellenet. The Scout Report is a weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators. However, anyone is welcome to subscribe to one of the mailing lists (plain text or HTML).
The Scout Report provides a short summary about each new link. There are three categories: Research and Education, General Interest, and Network Tools. In the pre-Google days I would add a link or two that I thought was particularly interesting every week to the favorite Places section of my web site. It grew to more than 1,000 links and it is organized into a dozen categories with additional sub-categories. I still get emails from people saying they find it useful. I am sure there are some broken links there but I do my best to keep the old ones pruned out and add some new ones.
Yesterday was the first meeting of the Center for Strategic & International Studies authentication working group. This is a really important subject for the future of the Internet and I am quite honored to be able to participate as a member of the working group. I'll be posting more about this later.
I have gotten a lot of feedback on my little piece about "Subway Surfing". Some said WiFi is already "meat and potatoes"; some were amazed to learn what is going on in the WiFi area.
Chris Davis told me how he is rolling out a community wide network in his rural Kentucky community. He also reminded me about Etherlinx which I had meant to include in my story.
Steph Kesler pointed out that if you are running XP you can actually see the WLAN's in your area without Boingo. This is true and I find it is actually more reliable as a way to connect than Boingo. She also reminded me about a very cool program called NetStumbler that shows all WLAN's in the area, their names, signal strength, WEP, enabled,etc. I used it some months ago and at the time it only could detect a certain model of Wireless Access Point and did not include the Aironet/Cisco 350 which I was interested in. This may have changed.
I was driving down Main Street in a small New England town in early 2002 when I got a craving for a sandwich. I stopped at a Subway Sandwich shop and enjoyed a sandwich while looking at some offline email on my ThinkPad. Just before leaving I got the impulsive idea to fire up my Boingo software to see if there might be any wireless local area network signals in the air. To my amazement, a powerful signal popped up on my screen. At first I thought it might be some kind of spurious signal from a microwave oven or a diathermy machine in a doctor�s office. After starting my browser and seeing my Wall Street Journal start-page I knew I was actually on the Internet. I then started my VPN software and tunneled into IBM where I have an email account. While replicating my email from the server in IBM, I was having an IM chat session with some friends and colleagues. So, here I was surfing the web and using the Internet. I checked in with DSLReports and found that my speed was 1.2 megabits per second -- 24 times faster than a 56k modem. Where was this bandwidth coming from? No idea! Who was paying for this bandwidth? Same answer. (Read more)
The single question that I get asked the most in my travels is which is better, DSL or cable? The related question often asked is which will win? The short answer is -- the consumer. However, the questions are part of the bigger issue of “speed”. The Next Generation of the Internet has many new characteristics that we will gradually begin to experience. The obvious one is Fast – more speed. The term bandwidth has become the common way to refer to the speed, or responsiveness, we experience when we are connected to the Internet. Soon we will be awash in bandwidth! If, like me, you have been in a hotel room recently and got connected at 19,200 bits per second or less and were relieved to get even that much speed you may wonder how I could make such an assertion. Bandwidth galore? At times it seems like we are starving for bandwidth; however, these are short-term limitations that we are experiencing and that will soon seem like history. (read more)
Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. has already commercialized a 1 Tbps optical underwater cable system that multiplexes a 10-Gbps signal into 105 channels. In other words they are enabling more than one hundred separate "windows" of light to simultaneusly and independently operate in a single strand of optical fiber. The newer technology, which Fujitsu hopes to commercialize in 2005, utilizes 240 "windows". With each "window" handling ten billion bits per second, the aggregate through the single fiber comes out to 2.4 trillion bits per second -- 2.4 terabits per second.
Lets put 2.4 terabits per second in perspective. The book Net Attitude has 472,000 characters in it (including spaces). Using eight bits to represent each character that would be 3.8 million bits in the book. At a speed of 2.4 TB/S it would be possible to transmit 633,000 copies of the book in one second. Lets take a CD. A CD can hold approximately 600 million bytes. With eight bits per byte that would be 4.8 billion bytes. At 2.4 TB/S it would be possible to transmit 500 CD's full of data in one second!
That is the gee whiz part. The important part is that we will really need all this bandwidth. Imagine a bank with trillions (terabytes) of bytes of customer and financial data in digital storage. This is today's reality. It is growing rapidly. How does one keep backup copies of vast amounts of data so that all of us can be assured that it is protected under any circumstances? One way is by having multiple redundant storage sites in various physical places around the world and then using optical networks to continuously make backup copies of the data in these multiple places. No single point of vulnerability. If one location is destroyed, the others are intact. Perhaps never more than a few seconds of lost data. Perhaps no lost data exposure at some point as every transaction that occurs is instantly recorded at a backup site. The transaction is not validated until the backup copy is made.
IBM and others have been doing this kind of redundant recording inside of storage devices for years. With vast bandwidth available, such as what Fujitsu has announced in November 2001, it will possible to do the same thing with the storage devices in effect being split geographically onto different continents. The Fujitsu demonstration was made over a distance of almost five thousand miles. This is the kind of protection of data that will be required as we become more and more dependent on digital data. Some people believe there is a glut of bandwidth. Yes, we will have bandwidth galore, but I think we are going to need it.
I'm optimistic about bandwidth. It's too easy to conclude that the Internet is overburdened and in trouble. Though we may see a few hiccups, and maybe even brownouts along the way, there's a lot going on to suggest that bandwidth and infrastructure will grow more than fast enough to meet consumer demand.
First, telecommunications companies including AT&T, US West GTE, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth and SBC are working on Subscriber Digital Lines, a technology that at least 90% of American homes are capable of using. They all have pilots underway. It promises millions (maybe up to 10 or more) of bits per second to the home or small business. As many as nine variations on xDSL have been evaluated in various stages. It looks like to me like ADSL and VDSL are most likely to achieve large numbers of users. It is really shaping up as a strong race between ADSL and Cable Modems. A standard will develop just as it did for 56K (X.90). 90% of the homes in
Holland and 60% in American have cable close by. With that large a market it is a certainty that companies will develop practical cable modems which promise at least 384k bits per second. Time Warner cable has a trial underway that claims in excess of one million bits per second. Standards are evolving in this area too. (read more)
I felt compelled to reflect back on a 
March 9, 2006
There are many things you can do with the iPad and we are only at the beginning -- but there are some things you can't do. Although I have been accused in jest that my enthusiasm for the iPad makes some wonder 
Three of America's great business magazines have been around for a long time -- 
The 
There is something about 
Fast 
I continue to learn a lot about libraries from my board service at 
I will believe it when I see it confirmed -- hopefully in the Spring -- but looks like the 
There was a short overnight in 
The motorcycle ride to the 
There have been a number of stories here about 
This epilogue to the "
The 4:45 AM departure from home last Sunday was not a barrel of fun but the flight to San Francisco was uneventful and was followed by a visit with 
This was my first trip to Greenland and Iceland. I have been fortunate to visit many countries around the world but have never been to these two unique places. Thanks to 
The 
Thoughts about the conference to follow shortly, but since 
I am sticking to my story -- the 
The flight to Los Angeles last week was long but on schedule and it provided some time to make a dent in reading 
I have to admit that I am not surprised that the 
A reader of the 
The 
We met 
The 
There is much to write about Africa and Internet technology, but I can not resist sharing about our luggage. We waited in line along with many others to provide information about the size and color of the missing bags. The agent entered the information and gave us a printout that was clearly from a decades-old system. We were told to give a call after twenty-four hours. I called after 26 hours and was told there was no update and that it could take up to five days. The reasoning was that there may not be room in the next few flights for "extra" baggage -- the classic case of taking care of the new customers rather than upset them by helping customers who have already been disappointed. After continuing to get "there is no new information" I thought to myself that tracking luggage would be a great application for the web. I wondered if the airline had thought about it.
There are quite a few stories here in the blog about "
The 
The annual "
One element of privacy on the Internet is "Opt in" versus "Opt out". When you register at a web site you will often see a small box to be checked giving you the “option” to be included or not included in subsequent emails making offers to you. Opt in means you proactively choose to be included. Opt out means you are included by default and you have to take action to be removed from the list of those who will automatically receive the emails. In some cases you have to read the words very carefully to determine which case is the default. This is part of 
There will be millions of 
And now we have 
We all have our
favorites. Me too. Books, web sites, restaurants, plays, movies, orchestras, composers,
concerts, hiking and biking trails, places to run, etc. Occasionally
I write about these "
I felt very fortunate to turn 62 earlier this month but I would feel even more fortunate if I was 
The trip to New York for a board meeting last week went smoothly. Traffic was light -- even within the city -- and I got to the hotel lobby in much better than normal time. The one thing that went less well than it could have the check in process at the 
The Seven Wonders of the World is an expression that is as old as I can remember but it turns out there are actually 
A video of Ira Magaziner's talk at last week's 
A number of people commented about the 
Back in 
I started using 
Visiting China is an eye opener culturally and economically. It is a rapidly developing country and it appears that special interest groups do not get in the way of progress. Perhaps it was the same way when America was building the 
It was time for 
According to the wiktionary, a "
The title may sound presumptuous since I am not an advertising
expert. However, from a consumer point of view, I suspect my views may be shared
by many of my friends, colleagues, and readers. Let's start with television
and then consider the web. There are very big differences.
There have been several stories here about 
Technology writer, Peter Svensson, wrote an interesting story called "
There are some pictures from the 
The final afternoon of the 
IBM had some demonstrations set up in the breakout areas at the 
There wasn't time during the two and a half hour drive from Denver to 
The central theme at the 
Today I attended the 
The snow on Wednesday was melting fast, the temperature was in the fifties, and the 
The Oslo, Norway based 
Today's 
Just back from sunny 
The sky was blue in Connecticut today too but the temperature was only in the high twenties. The 
In 1980, while serving as branch manager for 
As discussed here many times, grass roots movements such as the Internet and Linux are hard to stop. However, one of the impediments to very fast adoption of Linux as compared to just the fast adoption that is taking place has been the underlying threat of legal action to a user or vendor of Linux by a patent holder. 
Chris Anderson from 
The 
Of all the many conferences I attend each year, my favorite is 
The team at Macromedia has done a fantastic job in creating 
The IT Conference in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil which I attended on October 20, 2004 was produced by 
A 
There are many people who know much more than I do about telecommunications and I am really pleased that a few of them at 
It was a rainy day and so I decided to work on something I have been putting off for a long time -- cleaning up my contact list. We all have contact lists. Some of us keep them in a Palm Pilot or other 
Recently I wrote a short story about "
There is a lot going on at Opera. I do not mean the 
New York
Someone recently said that using 
The four 
I knew that eventually competition would begin to take
hold in broadband. I first wrote about this in a
Rupert Goodwin
Convergence
as a technology concept has been around for decades. Many have predicted the
convergence of electronics and entertainment, of PC's and TV's, and more recently
of WiFi and cellular. All of these areas are in fact undergoing various degrees
of convergence but there is another area that many are not as familiar with.
It is called 
Shortly
after September 21st, 2001, more 
