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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.

iPad stories on patrickWeb

Gadgets, Home Automation, Internet Technology, Media, Music, Personal Computing, WiFi, iPhone April 27, 2010 09:30 PM

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

iPad Thoughts

Part 1: Initial Thoughts

Part 2: Reading Books

Part 3: Other Reading

Part 4: What You Can Not Do

Gadgets, Home Automation, Internet Technology, Media, iPhone, Music, Personal Computing, WiFi 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.

iPad stories on patrickWeb

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.

Other healthcare-related stories on patrickWeb

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.

Index to patrickWeb stories about iPad

Gadgets, Home Automation, Internet Technology, Media, Music, Personal Computing, WiFi, iPhone April 4, 2010 10:59 PM

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Olympic Advertising

Olympic Torch It was a privilege to be able to be at the opening ceremony In Atlanta (1996), Nagano (1998), and Sydney (2000). (Lots of pictures in the travel section in the patrickWeb photo gallery). The ceremonies get more extravagant each year and you have to wonder how they are going to top it the following year. This year in Vancouver was no exception -- it was a marvel.

The Atlanta Olympic Games was the beginning of e-business for IBM. A member of our team built an experimental "ticket server" to see if we could actually sell tickets to the Games online. At the time it was the largest e-commerce site on the Internet. The first commercial customer for the technology followed later that year -- it was L.L. Bean.

The athletes who compete to win or lose by a small fraction of a second are truly incredible. The other thing about the Olympic Games that gets more incredible each year is the advertising. Some tell me I am in the minority on this but I think the advertising is over the top. When is enough enough?

An analysis of "the tapes" would likely show the following as the most repeated phrases of the Games.

Coming up
We'll be right back
When we come back
After the break
Right after this
Stay with us

Years ago I had the privilege of sitting next to Bob Costas at a dinner. What a nice and very sharp man -- who looks much younger than his 58 years. When I heard him say "stay with us" it seemed he was inwardly saying "I know you have already seen all of these ads dozens of times and could recite them word for word and I also know that you are likely going to the kitchen or lavatory while they are playing even though consultants who "measure" viewers are telling the advertisers how many millions of people are "watching". On the first Friday night, NBC ran 20 minutes worth of ads during the 9pm hour. In spite of this it is projected that the network will lose $250 million on the coverage it provided.

If they could have sold one out of each two minutes instead of "just" one out of three, would they have? Is there snow in Canada? The model is clearly broken. What is the solution? I do not claim to have the precise answer but I am confident it is not more minutes of advertising or more cost of goods sold to be born by consumers in order to prop up the existing outdated model. The new model will be based on the Internet and "power to the people".

Boxee may hold the clue. The idea is to have a small box (or a chip in your DVD player or TV) that runs software from Boxee. Boxee acts like TV Guide" -- it is a single interface to all forms of video including movies you make yourself, YouTube, Vudu, Netflix streaming, and all the channels of network and cable TV as we know them. The viewer decides not only what to watch but, if the content is not free, then the viewer decides how to pay for it. This is necessary because there will definitely continue to be content that is not free. NBC hauled a lot of robotic cameras and crew up to Vancouver at a cost of millions. They have to recover that somehow.

So how might you pay? One way is to watch the barrage of droning advertisements like today. Another model is to pay a fee per view. Instead of watching three hours of Olympic Games + ads from 7 - 10 on channel X, you pay $2.99 and watch the two hours of Olympic Games from 8 - 1- on channel Y. For 99 cents you watch the 6 PM news at 6:40 and get 100% news. Another model might be that if you are willing to provide some personal preferences you get the full hour including the ads but the ads are tailored to things relevant to you based on your profile. There are many variations on the "power to the people" theme. Stay tuned.

Media, People, Travels March 2, 2010 10:55 AM

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.

Internet Technology, Media, e-Business February 23, 2010 04:00 PM

Friday, February 12, 2010

Knovel Blogs

People at a conference 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.

John's post on Genesys XYI can be found at http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/archives/2010_01_26.php#Genesys XVI.

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Conferences, Gadgets, Internet Technology, Media February 12, 2010 10:10 AM

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Amazon and the iPad

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.

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.

Gadgets, Internet Technology, Media January 31, 2010 03:39 PM

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Genesys XVI

People at a conference 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.

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Conferences, Internet Technology, Media January 26, 2010 01:10 PM

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Books

While e-book technology is racing forward, the publishers are stuck in the past. Several of them have announced that they will make new best sellers available on e-books only after the physical book has been for sale for at least several months. They think that if a hot new book comes out you will go to a store or online and buy the physical book. It may have been true when there were only a relative handful of e-books to choose from. Amazon now has more than 400,000. Barnes & Noble claims more than one million. With more than two dozen e-book formats (not a good thing) there likely are millions of e-books available. The publishers don't understand or are in denial about how passionate e-book readers are.

Many Kindle owners are so hooked (or nooked) that they will only purchase a book if it is an e-book. Friends and family know better than to give them a "book" for a gift, although at some point receiving a real book will be very desirable (and expensive) as a collector item to cherish. The publishers say if books "deteriorate" to being sold for $9.99 (or less) as e-books that the result will be that consumers will end up with fewer new books to choose from. Their logic is that at the lower prices, publishers will have fewer resources available to assist authors and therefore there will be fewer authors. One would think that after seeing what (predictably) happened to music that publishers would embrace e-books in a major way rather than wait wait wait.

With regard to the music business, more musicians are realizing that even reviled file sharing may not be evil after all. According to techdirt, Shakira, Norah Jones, and Nelly Furtado say "it's ok". The posting says that these well known singers are saying that the industry is overreacting to the issue of file sharing. Sky News talked to three top female singers and found they all recognized that it was pretty much the natural state of the market, and it helped gain more exposure. Techdirt quoted Shakira as saying, "I like what's going on because I feel closer to the fans and the people who appreciate the music. It's the democratization of music in a way, and music is a gift. That's what it should be, a gift." And Norah Jones? "If people hear it I'm happy. I'm not going to say go and steal my album, but you know I think its great that young people who don't have a lot of money can listen to music and be exposed to new things."

Has digital music resulted in fewer musicians? I doubt it. I don't know how many there are -- many tens to hundreds of thousands. And that's people who get paid (though some don't get much). According to the National Association of Music Merchants there were a total of 62 million amateur musicians in the U. S. in 1996. The advent of services such as Pandora makes it possible for "amateurs" to get their music exposed and some of them go on to be famous. Might the same thing happen when aspiring bloggers can avoid the high cost and complexity of "publishing" a book and introduce their creativity via an e'book? The old saying remains -- "everybody has a book in them". Not sure where I got that but I believe it.

e-book readers are here to stay and they will get better and better. The e-textbook is emerging also, but not fast enough for me. I hate to see my grandchildren carry tens of pounds of books in their backpacks and have to bend over to carry the weight. When they tell their children about this it will seem very strange.

Gadgets, Media January 24, 2010 03:39 PM

Sunday, January 17, 2010

e-philanthropy

There are so many ways to help those in need. I wrote a story called e-philanthroy just over ten years ago -- posted below. The number of developments on the Internet since then would have been unfathomable back then. I remember Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley giving a presentation about eBay back then and have to admit more than skepticism at the time. Needless to say she was right -- results for 2009 not final yet but the year before eBay had revenue of $8.5 billion and net profit after tax of $1.8 billion. My nook auction has 38 followers and 18 bids with the high bidder at $270. Rather than wait, there is $1,000 on the way to Americares for Haiti.

There are many high quality charities but I like to support those that have low administrative costs. FoundationSource posted a list of the ones they recommend. Americares has the highest percentage of funding to programs -- 98.7%. One of the most innovative approaches -- that would be unheard of back in 1999 -- is mobile donations. Just send a text message to 90999 with the message "haiti" and $10 will be sent to the Red Cross -- and the $10 will be placed on your cell phone bill. Not inconceibable that tens of millions of people will do this.

The most powerful part of the Internet that has developed since 1999 has been the social networks. In countless cases this has been the way that friends and family have been able to communicate to and from Haiti. Even though the terrestrial phone systems were mostly wiped out, the satellite-based Internet connectivity was preserved. NetHope and Inveneo are setting up a satellite and WiFi link in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas and Cisco is providing the various relief agencies with WebEx which will enable emergency response conference calls and collaboration. e-philanthropy will grow in importance in the years ahead.

e-philanthropy

October 5, 1999
(edited January 17, 2010)

I think we are all aware of how well the economy has been doing in recent years. The unprecedented growth has resulted in prosperity for many people beyond what they may have imagined was possible. For many people the amassing of a million dollars of net worth was a dream they didn't really expect to happen. Now many of those same people likely dream of $10 million. Those with $10 million dream of $100 million and those with $100 million dream of being billionaires! Much is being written about the wealth of so many. At the same time there are much larger numbers of people who have not been so fortunate. There are many people who go to bed hungry. Even in "affluent" communities there are long lists of people waiting to gain access to barely habitable Federal housing. For reasons of health, location, skills, misfortune, or disadvantage there are large numbers of people in need.

Who is responsible? The government or those who are more fortunate? Many would agree it is at least in part the latter? What can be done? A lot. For those of us who have been fortunate there is a range of ways to help out. Basically, there are so many ways to help that there are no excuses for not doing so. The means to help follow a hierarchy as do so many things. At the base of the pyramid of helping is giving money anonymously. This can be done through the United Way, churches or synagogues, private foundations, various national appeals, or directly to pinpointed charities. Web sites abound. A few links can be found here.

A second level up the pyramid is to not be anonymous; to directly support causes that are meaningful or important to you or your friends and family. A couple of years ago I attended a reception of the Society of Alexis de Toqueville, a group of contributors to the United Way who exceed a threshold of $10,000 in giving per year. At the reception I was astounded both at how many people were there and how many people were not there. It was initially impressive to see a group of 150 or so in the room. Some quick arithmetic suggested that the giving represented was probably greater than $2 million. On the other hand seeing that there were just a very few people (literally) from any one of the major companies represented (GE, IBM, Merrill Lynch, Chase Manhattan, Texaco, etc.) made it painfully clear how small the participation really was. Given that the stocks of all these companies (and many more) has appreciated so much and the additional fact that these companies all provide a corporate match of the employee gift shows how much potential there really is. Suppose, for example, an employee had options to buy company stock at $25 per share and the current price of the stock was $50 per share. A gift of just 100 shares of stock would be worth $5,000. The company match would make the gift worth $10,000 and establish the employee as an Alexis de Toqueville giver. The cost of the donation to the employee would be $2,500 to exercise the options plus a capital gains tax (assuming the donated shares had been held sufficiently) of roughly $750 minus a tax savings of $2,000 (assuming a 40% tax bracket) or a net cost of $1,250. The leverage of the gift: 8 to 1!

A further extrapolation of the leveraged giving idea is the formation of a private foundation. On October 21, 1998 the Senate passed a bill which made permanent the section 170(e)(5) about charitable deduction for gifts of appreciated stock to private foundations. This means that any person can establish a private foundation and use appreciated stock to do so. This can be a very useful way to reduce tax obligations in the event of a bonus payment, retirement payout of restricted stock, or any "spike" in income. At the same time the foundation can be used to provide charitable donations for subsequent gifting or even to receive and distribute charitable donations from others . There are a few catches but they are reasonable. One is that your foundation must give away at least 5% of it's average net assets per year. Another is that you have to file a tax return for the foundation. If all this is too daunting, you can donate to an existing foundation that someone else has established. Some links to resources can be found at http://www.jcdowning.org/ An example of a simple private foundation and links to the tax forms can be found at http://patrickfoundation.org

At the Alexis de Toqueville reception, hosted by Jane Pauley (NBC) and Bob Wright (GE), I was quite impressed with the brief comments made by Jane. She talked about the positive impact people can have by publicly revealing the amount of their contributions. Put modesty aside, she said, and let others know. It will challenge them and spur larger gifts. I think she is right. As the United Way and others publish their gold/silver/platinum giver lists the top categories seem to be growing.

And then there is the most important gift of all -- personal involvement. Your time is your most scarce resource and giving even a small amount of it is often very difficult. In the end however this is the greatest gift and the greatest leverage. An hour of time to a board or committee can be as valuable as the 8 to 1 leverage of a financial gift.

How can we get more people thinking about all this? One idea is e-philanthropy. It is not just "click here to donate". It is a larger idea. Creating a local community of interest, a charity portal, that can enable charities to make their needs known and where those with resources can make their abilities known whether it is an anonymous gift, targeted visible funding, or volunteer time. If the idea were to spread it might mean enabling people to contribute to charities where they grew up, went to school, or have a vacation home. It might also be a resource to help people set up their own private foundations or contribute to existing ones. It might also be a way for the smallest of charities with no executive director, corporate sponsors, nor advertising budgets to make themselves visible.

The bottom line is simple. Incomes and assets are up. So is the need of those less fortunate. Let's give e-philanthropy a chance.

An interesting article about e-philanthropy can be found at http://www.greenstar.org/e-philanthropy/

Gadgets, Media, People January 17, 2010 10:39 PM

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Nook Epilogue

I got "Kindlized" in March 2008. Two years later I got "nooked". The "e-book" idea -- replacing the paper book with something electronic -- has been around for three decades but it is really taking hold now. Over the years there have been various "e-book readers" introduced and now we are seeing a flood of them. The nook is an excellent product but I put in on eBay last week. I suspect that if I had the nook two years ago and then the Kindle came along that I would stick with the nook.

The two products are very similar but also different. The nook is a more attractive product but the Kindle is a little bit lighter. The nook has more functionality but the Kindle is a bit more intuitive. The nook has a very nice color screen which is used to display book covers and to provide navigable menus. The Kindle does not have that. A very nice feature of the nook is that you can "lend" a copy of a book you have read to a friend. The friend has two weeks to read it or they may decide to buy their own copy. The nook is also quite nice if you are a visitor to Barnes & Noble stores. While there you get free WiFi access and some free reading material too.

The auction currently has 32 people following it. There have been twelve bids with the high bid at $152.50. With the sporty Jack Spade case I suspect it will bring at least $250. The auction ends on Monday evening. Whatever the final proceeds are, they will be tripled and sent to Americares for Haiti.

Gadgets, Media January 16, 2010 03:39 PM

Thursday, January 14, 2010

OCLC - Part 2

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.

OCLC Homepage

WorldCat

Internet Technology, Media, Public Policy January 14, 2010 03:39 PM

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Nook

I first got "Kindlized" in March 2008. Now, nearly two years later I have been "nooked". The "e-book" -- replacing the paper book with something electronic -- is not a new idea. Project Gutenberg started in 1971 and has a collection of more than 30,000 books which have been digitized. Digital books can be read on a PC and there are various software offerings that can enable you to read books on your mobile phone or personal digital assistant. Over the years there have been various "e-book readers" introduced. The idea behind the e-book reader is to have a dedicated device that is optimized for reading. I had never met anyone, myself included, that found reading a book on a PC, a handheld device, or an e-book reader to be a good experience. For years I had believed that the day would come but that so far nothing had compared to a real book. That was before I became "Kindlized".

After reading Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth in a new and comfortable way, I was hooked. I had recently purchased the paperback version of "Pillars" for $14.97 and was about half-way through the gripping 1,000 page novel. With my new acquisition I visited the Kindle bookstore on the device and keyed in "pillars". I selected the Follet novel and in less than a minute the Kindle version was ready to read. The $7.99 charge for the e-book was automatically placed on my credit card. There is no login, user id, password or network connection process. The "Amazon Whispernet" (from Sprint) is totally seamless. At the time there were 100,000 kindlized books -- now there are more than 390,000. You can even get Net Attitude on the Kindle. As for reading books, I have reached the point where I won't buy a paper book anymore. If it isn't on the Kindle, I don't want to read it. Maybe I will miss something but 390,000 books will keep me busy for a very long time.

A year later I migrated to the Kindle 2 -- now known as the Kindle and also got a Kindle DX for use in aviation -- it is great for airport and approach charts. Now along comes the Barnes & Noble nook. I could not resist getting the new gadget. It is similar to the Kindle but different in a number of ways. One very nice feature is that you can "loan" a book to a friend. It is an electronic sharing and the friend can only have it for two weeks and then must buy their own if they haven't finished with it. Barnes & Noble has also nicely integrated their e-book with their stores. Free WiFi and some free reading of the day. I don't spend much time in stores but many people do. I think it is a good feature. As for the device itself, it is very nice but quite a bit heavier than the Kindle and not nearly as intuitive -- at least so far. Getting it out of the packaging and getting familiar took much longer than the Kindle. The nook has a color screen at the bottom of the main display which shows the cover of the book and provides navigation. I need to give it more time but initial impression is that the Kindle is quite a bit better. It is a joy to use. Once I finish the juicy Ken Follett novel I am reading on the Kindle I will begin another novel on the nook and see how it goes. Stay tuned.

The Chinese invention of paper in 105 A.D. changed the way the world communicates. The invention of "e-ink" may change it again. The electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper. The screen displays the ink particles electronically. It reflects light like ordinary paper and uses no backlighting. While the technology is racing forward, the publishers are stuck in the past. Several of them have announced that they will make new best sellers available on e-books only after at least several months. They think that if a hot new book comes out you will go to a store or online and buy the physical book. They don't understand or are in self denial about how passionate e-book readers are. They say if books "deteriorate" to being sold for $9.99 (or less) as e-books that the result will be that consumers will end up with fewer new books to choose from. One would think that after seeing what (predictably) happened to music that they would embrace e-books in a major way rather than wait wait wait. I do not see books disappearing but they will become more collector items and niche items for those who want them Books will also become more expensive.

e-books are here to stay and they will get better and better. One e-book holds thousands of books and yet my grandchildren carry tens of pounds of books in their backpacks and have to bend over to carry the weight. When they tell their children about this it will seem very strange.

Gadgets, Media December 17, 2009 03:39 PM

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Supernova 2009

Ppeople at a conference 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.

Other conference related patrickWeb stories

Conferences, Internet Technology, Media, Mobile, Public Policy, iPhone December 6, 2009 01:30 PM

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

OCLC - Part 1

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.".

OCLC Homepage

WorldCat

Internet Technology, Media, Public Policy November 17, 2009 03:39 PM

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Knovel Interview

Prior to the Special Libraries Association convention at the Washington Convention Center in June there was an interview aranged by Knovel Corporation. The video was used on displays around the convention center and then made it's way to the Knovel Blog. The conference closed with a panel will be moderated by TV newscaster Judy Woodruff. The panelists were Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Robyn Meredith, and yours truly. In the video interview I tried to set the stage a bit and also cover a few things I suspected Judy would not ask about.

Conferences, Internet Technology, Media September 12, 2009 11:34 AM

Sunday, August 23, 2009

The Classical String Quartet

Violin

The first story about music here in patrickWeb was called "Running with Mozart" and it was published on August 17, 1997. There are quite a few other music related stories since. Some are about concerts, some about my conducting experiences, and many about the digital music.

Most of us think of MP3 or iPods when we hear the term digital music, but there is another kind of digital music. Actual music scores from hundreds of years of ago have been located, scanned and made available as PDF files for anyone who wants to examine them or perform them. The string quartet was one of the most widely-cultivated genres of chamber music during the Classical period, with Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven all being substantial contributors. The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University Library has made a fantastic collection of sheet music for the string quartet published between 1770 and 1840 available online. I found it quite interesting to check out the crisp PDFs of some very old works -- the oldest published piece of music in the collection is from 1770 by Antonin Kammel (Czech Republic). Click on the link "Explore the Collection" on the left hand side of the homepage. Thanks to the Scout Report for uncovering this great resource.

Other music related stories at patrickWeb

Media, Music August 23, 2009 10:17 AM

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Paper Thin

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 -- the current issue has 68. It used to be hundreds of pages. BusinessWeek has become "paper thin".

24/7 Wall St published an online story "The Sun Sets On BusinessWeek, Forbes, And Fortune" in May in which it claims BusinessWeek is in the worst shape of the three business magazine giants. Its advertising pages are said to have fallen 16% in 2008, are down 38% this year through the end of April, "and in the most recent issue, the drop was an extraordinary 63%". All of the magazines have an online presence but so many advertisers have moved online that advertising rates have declined. Industry experts say that Business Week has lost money for two years and will lose over $20 million this year if its advertising continues in a nose-down dive.

If the sun does indeed set on the three great business magazines, they will certainly not be the first to fall. The first issue of PC Magazine back in the summer of 1981 was a thrill to read and it was sad news this past November when Ziff Davis Media decided to cease publishing the magazine. "The viability for us to continue to publish in print just isn't there anymore," Jason Young, chief executive of Ziff Davis, said in an interview.

The problem is not just the recession, in my opinion. Certainly the economic times have accelerated things but the fundamental problem with advertising is that much of it is not effective. I would dare say most of it. Various consultants tell advertisers how many people are reading a magazine or watching a TV show. With a magazine there is no way to know. TV viewership gets sampled but I question any conclusions other than when an advertisement starts during my watching of CNBC, I hit the mute button. I watch 6 PM evening news starting at 6:20 and fast-forward over the ads. Some years ago there was a story about Buffalo, New York where someone measured the use of the city water system during the Super Bowl. For some reason water usage spiked upward during quarter ends and at halftime. If it could have been measured, no doubt that refrigerator compressor usage went up during these periods too.

It is true that some ads are watched and enjoyed and in fact WebMediaBrands (where I am a director) has made a business out of the phenomenon. Ads of the World -- a part of grahpics.com -- allows visitors to view top ads, news about ads, and learn how to create great ads. Aside from people who love ads, most people do not like ads that are blasted out in shotgun fashion. There may be ten million people who are candidates for a particular product or service but 200 million are presented with the ad. Advertisers don't like it either. That is why they are cutting back and causing the advertising recession. What advertisers do want is targeted ads. They want to advertise a new sports car to only those people who are ready to buy a car, can afford to pay for it or finance it, and who are inclined to want a sports car. The technologies of the Internet and supercomputing are laser focused on making targeted advertising possible. The emerging question will be whether the right to privacy will ultimately prevail. Stay tuned.

Media, e-Business August 9, 2009 11:00 AM

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Comcasted - 2

Broken phone 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.

Internet Technology, Media, Public Policy July 23, 2009 06:12 PM

Thursday, February 26, 2009

The Kindle 2

e-book And now we have the Kindle 2, the next generation wireless reading device. I am really pleased with so far. At just over 1/3 inch and 10.2 ounces, the new device is very sleek -- as thin as a typical magazine and lighter than a paperback. It is not radically different than the original Kindle but definitely a refinement of the user interface. The faster page turns are noticeable and the sixteen shades of gray instead of the current four makes the already sharp Kindle page sharper.

While the cell phone makers need three years to convert to the new micro USB standards-based charger, Amazon has already included it with Kindle 2. I think they have a winner on their hands. An analyst I heard today said that Amazon was cannibalizing it's book business. I think he missed the point. When Amazon sells a "real" book for $20 their cost will include the printing, binding, inclusion of a multi-color glossy dust jacket, picking the book from the warehouse shelf, packing it in a box, and loading it on a truck. When Amazon sells a "Kindlized" book for $10 their cost includes a server noticing the click on amazon.com or on a Kindle and the transmission of a few hundred thousand or so bytes of data over the air to the Kindle plus an infinitesimal amount of storage to keep a copy on their server. The only question is how many times greater the profit margin is in favor of the non-book book.

Other patrickWeb stories in the gadget category

Gadgets, Media February 26, 2009 04:07 PM

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Gen XV

People at a conference 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.

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.