Connecting the Dots

Interesting brain articles today...

Almost on a daily basis I am surrounded by information about the acceleration of learning that is going on regarding the brain. Two items hit my radar screen today and were worth noting immediately:

1) Insulin Study Backs Theory Alzheimer's May Be Type of Diabetes: Alzheimer's disease researchers at Rhode Island Hospital and Brown Medical School said they found more evidence that the condition may be a new type of diabetes, or insulin deficiency, specific to the brain...

2) Are smarter people better at ignoring things?: People frequently complain that they can't remember things -- and they wish their brains had more storage capacity, like today's ever-expanding computer hard drives and RAM. If we could just improve the sheer size of our memory, we'd be able to retain and manipulate more data, and we'd become smarter and smarter -- right?

Not according to an intriguing new experiment by brain scientists at the University of Oregon. Edward Vogel and a team of students took a handful of volunteers and tested their "visual working memory" -- their ability to maintain awareness of events and objects around them.

"The World is Open vs. Flat"

According to this UK Financial Times article, Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, is contemplating his second edition -- which Friedman is currently writing -- be thrown in to open source (somewhat akin to Wikipedia) so that readers can update the content dynamically and instantaneously.

It is a vision that will turn his publishers - Penguin/Allen Lane in the UK and Farrar Straus Giroux in the US - pale with anxiety about the copyright implications, not to mention the risk that opponents of the book or its message about the benefits of globalisation will try to hijack the wiki edition. But it is a vision that is perfectly in tune with the picture of a globalised and inter­connected world that Mr Friedman outlines.

A version of the book that can be constantly updated may also be the only way to guarantee that it remains current. The book's premise is that, at the beginning of this century, the world entered a new phase of globalisation, based on disruptive social, political and technological events ("flatteners", as Mr Friedman calls them) during the latter part of the 20th century.

This is a premise for publishing that I sincerely hopes catches on and quickly. While reading John Batelle's book The Search the day it hit the bookstore shelves, I realized that several fundamental developments in search had occurred in the months preceding publishing that would've been good to include. With the lead time in publishing, however, that is not feasible.

So here we go again with content cartel members (in this case publishers of books) that need to wrestle with and change their business model, just like the record and movie associations (and television networks) are being compelled to do in this age of nearly instant dissemination of digital bits.

Too many organizers...too little time...and it's time to simplify

Today I missed meeting a friend for lunch and feel like a complete butthead. I've got plenty of excuses (our house is being remodeled for one) but the real reasons is this: I have too many organizers and too many places to keep updated -- and I had the appointment on my personal Blackberry but it was turned off while I'm at work since I don't want to carry around two Blackberries.

All these PDA's and Blackberries were supposed to make sure that we had our life, our to-do's and our communications at our fingertips. It's supposed to be easy, but I find "feeding the beast of data and keeping all the beasts in line" is a never-ending saga.

• I have a Blackberry 7230 for work that sync's with my work calendar in Lotus Notes. I refrain from keeping my personal stuff on my work laptop which includes my calendar and email.

• I have a personal Blackberry 7100 that sync's with my home Powermac. The kicker? During the house remodel I've been relying on my Powerbook as my main machine and iCal (Apple's calendar program which I use for personal appointments and tasks) is up-to-date on my home machine as is my main address book.

I know that I can sync across devices, operating systems and programs or pay a monthly fee for Apple's .Mac program to sync my Mac boxes up with each other. But all I want to do is to have this be SEAMLESS and EASY. Though I wrestled with using Gmail for my main email program -- since Google can target ads that wrap around each email -- the benefit of having my email in ONE PLACE accessible from ANY MACHINE makes it worth it (I used to get email on my Powerbook in Apple's Mail program and then go to my Powermac or the HP laptop I have and NOT have it available to me...what a crazymaker).

If Google adds a calendar to Gmail...that will be my main one and, hopefully, they'll have figured out how to sync PDA's, phones and Blackberries to their server-side offerings.

By the way, I have four email addresses that all forward to my Gmail account but 3 of the 4 require me to maintain them. Once a month or so I have to login to the webmail client of each and delete emails en masse. Time to simplify...

Connecting the Dots podcast for November 27, 2005

In the now classic Christmas movie "It's a Wonderful Life," George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) feeling trapped in "this crummy little town" has his world crash down around him. In Martini's bar, he talks to God praying to please "show me the way."

Most of us may not have seen how God resolved George's dilemma if not for a copyright accident.

You may know the story of why this five-times-nominated (but never won while fading in to obscurity) for an Academy Award movie but if not, listen to this week's podcast and how the story of It's a Wonderful Life is an allegory for the current situation we all face with stale copyright laws, a remix culture, and the enabling tools combining to accelerate the demand for new ways of thinking about content and its protection.

Also listen to the segment "The Radar Screen" which covers topics that hit Steve Borsch's radar screen this past week.

Listen to or download this week's podcast

Holographic storage to the rescue in 2006?

I've been chasing backup storage for years. It seems as the moment my backup capacity is larger than my hard drive size -- like when 80-100MB drives were the standard and I had a 100MB Zip disk -- hard drive standard sizes grew. Today, I've got two 250GB hard drives in my tower and one 250GB external Maxtor so I can never fully backup both drives.

What I end up doing is backing up to DVD-R at about 4GB's or so at a time. Crucial files are backed up and I figure I can always reinstall applications. Still, I'd love to simply have greater backup capacity than my hard disks on my main machine and be able to back up *everything* besides all my videos, photos and files on to DVD-R.

Holographic storage to the rescue in 2006?

In an article in New Scientist magazine, 300GB DVD's are within months of shipping:

A computer disc about the size of a DVD that can hold 60 times more data is set to go on sale in 2006. The disc stores information through the interference of light – a technique known as holographic memory.

The discs, developed by InPhase Technologies, based in Colorado, US, hold 300 gigabytes of data and can be used to read and write data 10 times faster than a normal DVD. The company, along with Japanese partner Hitachi Maxell announced earlier in November that they would start selling the discs and compatible drives from the end of 2006.

There is an older article (from 2000) on PhysicsWeb -- or this one on HowStuffWorks -- that's worth a read if you're interested in more technical background of holographic storage.

Now whether DVD-R's with that capacity -- and affordable recorders for our personal computers -- ship in 2006 remains to be seen. But it sure seems like we're close to massive removable storage media that may finally outpace internal, affordable hard disk storage.

Thanksgiving: from a native American's perspective

As my wife, kids and I enjoy our Thanksgiving holiday and give thanks for how blessed we are, I can't help but consider what others are feeling on this holiday...namely native Americans.

Imagine it's 1805 instead of 2005. You're a Plains native living off the land and the >60 million (yep...MILLION) bison that roam the plains. The abundance you have -- in land and animal -- is considerable. Undoubtedly you would give thanks to your spiritual beings. The natives did this and more: they also paid homage to the bison and what they'd give up (their life) to feed and clothe the natives. This was not something taken lightly by them.

After decimating the native populations in the East, the Europeans move West (and around the place I live, present day Minnesota) and kill the bison for sport and to take away the primary food source of the natives. The people are hunted down and forced to live on reservations.

For the most part, native Americans do not celebrate this Thanksgiving holiday. This day is not one of joy nor is it a celelbration. In fact, some natives head to Plymouth Rock (the place purported to be the landing of the Pilgrims, their interaction with the natives and thus the bountiful feast that is the Thanksgiving holiday of today) and for the native people of our country, today is a national day of mourning for what was lost.

• A strong native America point of view here
• There is an interesting perspective from a native American who celebrates Thanksgiving here
• Abraham Lincoln's official 1863 proclamation starting the Thanksgiving holiday is here.

As I grew up, even thinking about the perspective of a long ago vanquished people (the native Americans) was something I wasn't taught nor cared much about. As I've grown older, I have frequently brought up thoughts about how our countries native people's got the short-end-of-the-stick in days gone by. Friends of mine would say, "Borsch...get over it. They lost." and all discussion would end.

Anyway...there's some more food for thought today along with your turkey...

High Speed Internet in Hotels

It's frustrating to be nickel-n-dimed in hotels (here's your complimentary bottle of Evian...for $4.50). When I stay in 4 or 5 star hotels, I am even more agitated when gouged especially when it comes to using high speed internet.

There are many people (including me) that want high speed internet to be free in hotels -- just like the water that comes out of the faucet. Do hoteliers? Of course not...since they want to protect revenues from their in-room telephones supposedly. But when was the last time *you* used a telephone in a hotel room? For me, it's probably been three years since I always use my cell phone to make calls.

To understand one point of view (the companies that cater to hoteliers), let's look at an abstract from a white paper offered by a marketing company, SDD:

White Paper: Strategies For Protecting Future Guest Internet Revenue
(Submitted to Hospitality Upgrade Magazine)

Charge for Internet Access. A recent survey of hotel guests found general agreement that broadband internet access should be free in hotel guest rooms. This is interesting since these guests (and their employers) pay for access everywhere else in their life. In this world of hidden agendas, who wants access charges to be free? Answer: 1. The owners of e-commerce and content portals who seek unrestricted public access to their goods and services! 2. The providers of internet routers and devices whose revenues grow proportionally with the increase in internet traffic presumed by free access. Who does not want it free? Answer: Anybody who must implement the infrastructure to support broadband access including the carriers, hoteliers, and commercial property owners and managers.

Nary a mention of Skype use further killing hotel telephony revenues. Or the future of television and movie delivery increasingly being offered online. Demand for high speed internet will increase dramatically over the next five years and not only put the last nail in the coffin for in-room telephony, but also negatively impact in-room television and movie revenues.

I think charging for internet use in hotels will continue and maybe increase though I'm NOT happy about it. Someone does have to pay for the connectivity and the infrastructure, especially as increasing demand for faster and faster speeds by savvy consumers keeps raising the competitive bar between hotels.

Open Source: The Capitalists Friend or Foe?

Is open source a friend or a foe of capitalists? Depends on whether you're already established as a software vendor (and have to defend yourself against it) or you're a startup wanting to get to market quickly (or you're funding said startup).

Slate has a fabulous article about open source and the perspective of SAP's CTO Shai Agassi...which echoes what Bill Gates has said in the past as well as Steve Ballmer. The article starts out like this:

This month, SAP's Shai Agassi referred to open-source software as "intellectual property socialism." In January, Bill Gates suggested that free-software developers are communists. A few years earlier, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called the open-source operating system Linux "a cancer." Considering what these guys say in public, I wonder what dark words they utter in private—that al-Qaida uses open-source software to plot terrorist attacks?

The philosophy behind open-source software is simple. Instead of zealously protecting source code—the blood and guts of any computer program—open source encourages any programmer to tear apart the code and build it back up again. The theory is that this collaborative process encourages innovation and decreases bugs by increasing the number of people with a stake in the project.

How could they have any other perspective?

Here's the kicker though. While listening to John Furrier's Podtech InfoTalk series of podcasts -- where he talks often with venture capitalists -- one refrain was a constant from the VC's: they expect that any startup software company *will* leverage open source software. The primary reason? There is so much open source software right now (Sourceforge shows 106,235 open source projects) that using it accelerates startups so quickly that it's now an expectation for getting funding.

Connecting the Dots podcast for November 20, 2005

 

The topics of this week's show are:

a) The Audible "new format" announcement and its impact on podcasters,

b) Tapping in to the Collective Consciousness for Fun & Profit,

c) Connecting (with people...not dots).

Listen to or Download this week's show

Connecting...

One great benefit to writing this blog as well as doing my weekly podcast has been connections with people. Not only have I had old friends, former colleagues and acquaintances discover me, but they've reached out and we've ended up connecting again.

The most delightful series of connections has come about when people in different parts of the world have emailed me or commented on my blog. I've had nice dialogues with people in Bali, Okinawa, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and in almost every state in the U.S. In addition, I've had people want to introduce me to others and -- as a way of introduction -- have pointed them to my blog first and then had them connect with me by phone or email.

I've also had people say to me upon meeting them, "Hey! I've read your blog." which is a nice conversation starter since we can commiserate about various topics I've posted about and/or they have. At the Web 2.0 conference I handed out my day job business card and said, "This is what I do" and handed a second, personal Connecting the Dots card (with my blog address and podcasting page URL) and said, "This is who I am."  Personally communicating with these mediums clearly does allow more of my thoughts, essence and passions to be brought forth...which helps make those connections.

So if you blog (or are thinking of doing so) and the talk turns to monetizing your blog or podcast, just remember that there are other intrinsic values in personal communications.

Tapping in to the collective consciousness for fun & profit

Tonight I was reading the November 28th issue of Forbes magazine. I read an article that was an "aha!" and sent it off to someone I know that is leading strategy surrounding innovation and ideation at a company. Let me give you the two reasons why this happened to have hit me:

1) I've been observing many Web 2.0 developments on the internet with all these new startup companies who are getting-to-market with not-yet-finished products. Starting with Google's release of Gmail (which *still* shows on their web site that it's in "beta") and moving to Yahoo 360 and many other web-based offerings, the new paradigm is to quickly prototype and release a product or idea and get the collective feedback of users. It's working so well, everyone seems to be doing it.

Then I read the Forbes article entitled, "Collective Opinion" (registration required). It stated in part,

"For years toymaker Lego rarely strayed from peddling 100-piece building-block sets that typically sold for $15. That's what customers were telling it to do--the customers participating in focus groups, that is. This venerable market-research tool puts a dozen ordinary folk in a room to talk about products while market experts listen in.

Yet a few years ago Lego unveiled a blockbuster product that was a radical departure from anything else in its 73-year history. The Star Wars Imperial Destroyer debuted in late 2002 as Lego's largest and most expensive set ever, at 3,100 parts and a $300 price tag. Its first production run, planned to last a year, sold in less than five weeks.

This winner came out of a different sort of focus group, one with 10,000 players. These were Lego customers responding to an e-mailed invitation to participate in an online popularity contest for new product ideas. The participants saw short lists of proposed toys, six at a time, and clicked on the ones that sounded appealing. They'd rank their choices and, if they felt creative, suggest a new idea. These ideas were fed, in turn, to other customers for popularity scoring against the ideas from Lego's own toy creators. The new suggestions, in turn, got creative juices flowing among still other players in the game. Virtual brainstorming, you could call it."

2) What Lego has done (using a company called Informative's software) is to automate the collection of their customer's wisdom and guidance and accelerate innovation. While it's tough to "beta" finished goods like Lego produces (vs. an internet service, say, like Writely), tossing out ideas to customers enables a company to float many ideas and it's the potential buyers that will help hone the product offering, modify or add to the prototype or concept, or even suggest new ones.

More and more leaders in companies are realizing the power of tapping in to the collective consciousness that is represented by millions of people jacked in to the global internet network. Imagine what's going to happen as this brainpower is harnessed to solve problems, focus on need, suggest and recommend products and services and let their intentions known so organizations and governments can better predict behavior and respond faster. Fortunately, companies like Informative, Google, Technorati and others understand that this collective consciousness is there and are rapidly trying to figure out how to tap in to this thought-stream.

Hey Audible! What about podcasters? Hey Apple! Where are you?

There is significant controversy over Audible's announcement last week of their new AudibleWordcast and the fact that it's one more file format scheme. There is a ton of mostly negative buzz from users and the cognoscenti. But it was Mitch Ratcliffe's acting-in-his-consultant-to-Audible capacity in a blog post (BTW, read the comments if you read his post) that made me sit up and take notice. Responding to Mitch's post were Dave Winer, and Doc Searls (also Doc here and here).

Unfortunately Mitch took the time to piss-in-their-Wheaties instead of engaging in an honest debate. He starts off his post talking about Bill Gates and it made me wonder if Mitch, like Bill, thinks Dave, Doc, Om and others are communists since we're not all embracing Audible's scheme?

As a podcaster with a nice critical mass of listeners, I'm currently more interested in just doing the show as a fun hobby. Would that change? Maybe if it became so popular that storage and bandwidth got out of hand and I had to make the podcast self-supporting. Would I take advertising? I'm not sure though it would be hard to walk away from significant monthly sums if my little show became popular.

I'm a firm believer in value-for-value. If I do work for you, you pay me. All humans work toward their incentives (food, shelter, love, recognition, work) and podcasters' payoff for our effort is NOT always expressed by podcasting-value in exchange for monetary-value. Incentives for podcasting vary widely by individual (some for the love of podcasting, some for a crusade, others for community, others for money) so there needs to be some sort of payoff for people's effort and energy devoted to podcasting.

All Audible addressed was money and is focused on what I perceive is their primary audience: content/copyright holders like publishers.

The Essence of the Audible Issue
They didn't address podcasters needs in their announcement. The controversy being played out isn't over value-to-value exchange, but rather is over .mp3 vs. the new Audible .aa format and the supposed robust service they're offering to podcasters enabling them to make money from their podcasts. This is clearly all about being Audible being the conduit for advertisers to tap in to this new podcasting phenomena and has *nothing* to do with podcasters themselves. I don't believe they're offering enough value for podcasters to turn our heads toward Audible.

Is it a good thing for podcasting to have yet another file format and is it even necessary to facilitate measurement and auditing? Is Audible even in the best position to perform this middle-man type service? Or is what Audible has launched, like I believe, completely unnecessary as there are already ways to measure and track podcast listening?

The supposed benefits of .aa is measurement and tracking and the ability to monetize podcasts. But as I said in my post about Apple and what they know about YOU whenever you re-synch your iPod to iTunes, I believe that measuring and tracking is occurring and monetization can happen without resorting to yet another, completely unnecessary file format.

As a capitalist first and foremost, I realize that there needs to be aligned incentives in any market...but especially one exploding like podcasting while traditional radio dies and advertisers scramble to throw their money in to the places where people are focusing their attention.

• Incentives for podcasters include the ability to freely and openly create and deliver podcasts. The mp3 format delivers a free and unfettered delivery to all listeners regardless of device and its easy to deliver as one file format does it all. Some (and I believe an increasing number) of podcasters would enjoy being paid for podcasting while many would absolutely refuse advertising in any form. But if the money comes, some (or many) podcasters will follow so monetary incentives are a good thing and yes, there needs to be measurement.

a) Storage and bandwidth are becoming less and less of an issue...which Audible used as additional justification for using their new service and which I think is bogus.

For $6.95 per month, my host (Blue Host) offers 10GB's of storage and 250GB's of bandwidth per month. At an average of 20MB's per mp3 podcast (that's a rough average estimate), that would allow 12,500 shows to be downloaded each month and few podcasters have that level of subscriber base (and there are free options like Ourmedia and cheap ones like Libsyn). So there's little incentive to use Audible for that service.

b) What if I wanted Audible to donate my funds to a worthy cause? Or provide a value conduit of some other kind (like visibility or promotion) for the podcaster?

• Incentives for advertisers (and Audible's scheme) is to measure podcast attention and pay for the access to that attention...and they REALLY want to get in the podcasting game...but as I pointed out in my Apple post, this is already possible without Audible (though not yet offered).

• Incentives for copyright holders (e.g., book publishers) is to find a way to tie a purchase to a listener and to measure the listening. Did they skip the ad or did they listen to it? Again, this is already in place and is something Apple has yet to implement.

• Audible must be SCARED TO DEATH that free podcasts are killing their business and are DESPERATE to get in the podcasting game -- but doing so with a new file format is a really bad idea since they're offering little else to podcasters that isn't either bogus (storage and bandwidth) or nebulous (For example, where is their matrix that shows the number of shows and how much I as a podcaster would make on each subscriber? If I have 300 subscribers does that mean I get $1 each? $3? $5? Or $.10?)

I now have 35 hours worth of incredibly compelling content on my iPod from major media outlets and indie podcasters, with shows that cover the gamut of science, technology and even health. While it's cool to listen to books on my iPod (usually many hours for each), I find that I'd much rather consume bite-sized content in the time I have to pay attention to podcasts instead of stretching my listening out over many, many days. Podcasts fit that perfectly and audio books do not.

Where is Apple?
The last question I have is -- if Apple does have the ability to measure and quantify downloads, listening *and* skipping as I said in this post -- then where are they? Why have they not gone-to-market with a measurable/auditable service for content creators? I think I know the answer, which is that Apple absolutely needs to tread carefully where publishers, record companies, movie studios are concerned. If they go too boldly in to becoming the hub of distribution, playing and quantification, then *all* of these content-centric industries will immediately see the disruption Apple could create on all of these industries simultaneously...and they'd work to crush Apple.

Connecting the Dots podcast for November 13, 2005

With literally a day spent wandering along the south shore of Lake Superior and down through the middle of Wisconsin, I had a lot of time to think, experience, wonder and explore. Several of my musings were around internet connectivity that would need to cover A LOT of geography.

Lots of people (like George Gilder) are comparing-n-contrasting the U.S. broadband penetration with that of Korea, Japan or Singapore. Come on...South Korea alone is 70% the size of Wisconsin! Just as a point of comparison, South Korea has a land mass of 98,640 square kilometers and Wisconsin has 169,642! Isn't it obvious why a tiny country like South Korea has ubiquitous (and fast) broadband and internet infrastructure? The US geography is so enormous -- and population density a fraction of other countries -- that the investments needed here are huge.

While driving for hours I thought, "Hey! I could grab my M-Audio Microtrack and record a podcast." So I did. Hope you enjoy it.

Listen to or download this week's podcast

Where or where are the Web 2.0 turnkey hosts?

Where are the modular, Web 2.0-ish web application hosting companies empowering individuals and, most importantly, the small to medium sized companies (that are the engine of the world's job creation) so they're able to accelerate in to this next phase of the Web?

In the last few months (and especially the last few weeks), I've had opportunity bitch-slap me in the face that *someone* needs to address. Admittedly there are some really hard problems to figure out (identity management, infrastructure) but the opportunity is there:

1) Small to Midsize Businesses (arguably SMB is defined as organizations with revenues from $0 to $1.5B) are either *clueless* about blogging, vlogging, podcasting, social apps, wiki's, ecommerce-with-digital-delivery, content management...or they see it as *really hard* to deliver...so they don't bother. SMB's need to host each of these in different places -- or they require *gignormous budgets* to develop and deliver meaningful Web applications.  When I was working at Vignette, we could deliver it all but only for the BIGGEST organizations and only those with the largest BUDGETS could buy, build and deliver truly meaningful web offerings for their organization.

All but low-level brochureware web sites and hard ecommerce was (and still is) available to SMB's. To fully take advantage of all that Web 2.0 promises, offerings need to be holistic, seamless and modular....Lego-like in their assembly and ending up looking like those SMB's spent millions on it.

2) SMB requires click-n-configure, drag-n-drop, browser-only creation and administraton that allows most of the non-techies in an organization an opportunity to manage. In a hosted environment, multiple creators/managers/users (located anywhere on the internet) need to be involved with discrete portions of the overall Web offering (like just their blog; just their child web site; just their part of the ecommerce catalog, etc.).

3) Ecommerce is really, really hard for SMB. Forget about B2B selling unless, again, the budgets are huge (remember B2B in the dotcom era?) but this is critical via web services in order to be competitive on the world stage. I've got my bride's company hosted at www.bigstep.com which is web/catalog/ecommerce (shopping cart too) but Bigstep does NOT have what we and dozens of other companies I talk with CRAVE: digital purchase and delivery of PDF's, media files and other files (micropayment capability would be frosting on this cake) in exchange for a customer's payment, seamless creation and the ability to add modular functionality quickly.

What do *you* want? What is available to you today?

Connecting the Dots podcast for November 6, 2005

Recorded on the M-Audio Microtrack...this week's show discusses Web 2.0-like web services and more about the "dirty little secret" of performance with them.

I'm a user of several different web services (Flickr, Typepad, Gmail, Bigstep) and am growing increasingly anxious

In addition, some thoughts about Apple, iTunes, the iPod and what *could* be known about you and your listening habits is brought forth.

Listen to or download this week's podcast

Apple's Achille's Heel...

No question that games have been Apple's Achille's heel. In fact, one of the key reasons I purchased an HP laptop was for games (my 11 year old son begged me). Of course, there are a host of little utility things that only a PC can do since the manufacturer <insert name here> doesn't support the Mac for some miscellaneous dweebezaarb application.

What if the upcoming Mac on Intel took care of that?

When announcing this past Summer that going forward Apple would be primarily supporting the Intel chipsets -- and that developer's needed to create "universal binaries" with Rosetta (powered by Transitive) so they'd run on both the current PowerPC chips as well as the future Intel ones -- I became quite interested in the emulation possibilities.

Games are, however, far too demanding to run well in emulation. Every ounce of performance is necessary to provide a good user experience. An experience which is, in fact, growing ever more powerful and rich with the advent of new gaming systems like the Playstation 3 and XBox 360.

Still, there is a lot of interest and debate about what Apple will do in this PowerPC to Intel transition. What if there was a minimal, base-case load of Windows (or an emulator) so that games and other applications would operate natively on Intel? Could Apple provide a near-equal gaming experience with Windows games yet have Mac OS X be the dominant operating system? It's intriguing to think that -- with this transition -- Apple would instantly and immediately remove the one key problem users have in switching to Apple: games.

High tech....always an adventure.

iPod, iTunes and what Apple knows about YOU

Had a *very* lively email discussion today with the smart folks in the Podcast Minnesota group after I started the thread about a new service that debuted (Fruitcast). It is just too good to leave inside an email threaded discussion -- and did it *ever* get me to thinking and connecting the dots about my iPod, iTunes, podcasts and what Apple knows about me.

Fruitcast has launched before Adam Curry's Podshow has fully rolled out. Fruitcasts' value proposition is to offer a way for podcasters to potentially monetize podcasts through advertising. There was a lot of discussion in the PodcastMN group and great points like:

• CR: it'll be interesting to see what happens with podshow.  because having advertising in their shows will select for a different type of audience.  and i suspect there will be some backlash about it. because honestly, the whole motivation for podcasting was to find content out there that didn't completely emulate the model of traditional radio in every way.

• Mike W: I don't know why everyone is in such a rush to "monetize" their podcast. I still am mildly offended that every somewhat popular blog has ads plastered all over them.

• Mike W: While I am going to watch this with a watchful eye, I don't ever want to lose control over what I do. If I advertise anything, it will be first and formost something I believe in and use.

• Mike O: There's no way to know who's listening -- so what advertiser in their right mind would pay that kind of money to listen to me ranting off into the void?

• Michael K: pointed out that there's no way to know how many of those downloads are actually being listened to.  What advertiser would want to fire their messages off to non-played files on people's disk drives?

None of this might matter in the long run. Podcasters might not even have a voice since Apple could -- given enough data about each-and-every podcast listener -- simply personalize the iTunes music store based on each subscriber's listening criteria and forget about trying to insert ads in to podcasts at all or get permission from a podcaster to do so. If you're a listener and are in to rock-n-roll, then there are a handful of podcasts that ought to be front-n-center on the podcast page for you. If you're a technoweenie, there are tons of tech shows like This Week in Tech, Podtech, ITConversations, etc. that could be too. Ads could be delivered to "channels" of podcasts on the podcast page and money offered to those podcasters that care to participate in an ad insertion model.

I predict Apple will be in the best position to monetize advertising since iTunes is the defacto gateway to digital music and podcasts (yeah, yeah...that's open to argument but it's surely the largest gateway).

So what does Apple know about you from your iPod and use of iTunes?  Is it Apple -- and not Podshow, Fruitcast, Odeo, Google or Yahoo -- that will know the most about you and the podcasts to which you listen -- and be the most powerful advertising powerhouse surrounding podcasting?

What if there was no more "want"?

Though not a "Trekkie" by any stretch of the imagination, I found Star Trek: The Next Generation an interesting show and the premises were often quite compelling. One particular episode entitled, "The Neutral Zone" had this premise: 

While Captain Jean Luc Picard is at a conference, the Enterprise finds a 20th century Earth craft containing three cryogenically frozen Humans.

Dr. Beverly Crusher informs Picard about the three humans, financier Ralph Offenhouse, singer LQ "Sonny" Clemens and homemaker Clare Raymond who have already been thawed and cured of the ailments that led them to be frozen in the first place.

The replicator on the ship could make anything any of them could think of (nanotechnology undoubtedly...instantly creating anything out of atoms) which dazzled these 20th Century humans. In one exchange between Picard and Offenhouse where the latter is extremely anxious to get back to Earth since the magic of compound interest has surely made him incredibly wealthy over the three centuries he's been in suspended animation:

PICARD
A lot has changed in three hundred years. People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of "things". We have eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We have grown out of our infancy.

RALPH
You've got it wrong. It's never been about "possessions" - it's about power.

So while many of us (including me fairly frequently) are focused on open source software, giving back to society, helping each other and providing for the common good, others are consumed by the accumulation of possessions and thus power. Will it take one, two or three centuries before want is eliminated and power equals influence instead of control?

Building blocks are enabling our future...

Whatever you call this next phase of the internet (Web 2.0; Blah, blah, blah "Live") there's one thing that is crystal clear: business as usual is over. We're accelerating in to an era that will leverage the always-on internet, the collective consciousness of the humans that are connected through it, and the enabling technologies and web services' offerings that companies are rushing to get in to the marketplace.

The internet-as-a-platform meme is becoming increasingly interesting and available to those that do NOT have deep pockets. From blogs, to photos (Flickr, Smugmug), to video (Brightcove, CurrenTV), to podcasting, to MySpaces, Facebook, Yahoo360 or MSN, more and more of what we want to consume, to share and to deliver-to-others is on the internet and the building blocks are either free or incredibly affordable.

When I started my blog last year and podcast this year, my objective was this, "My purpose with diving in to the blogosphere, becoming a podcaster and totally and completely immersing myself in Web 2.0 (the acceleration and momentum which is becoming palpable) is to figure it out, be in-the-game and gain an intuitive understanding of what's happening as the collective consciousness of mankind gets connected. The only way to understand it is to live it and what's happening right now is the most fundamental shift I'll see in my lifetime." Video is *really* hard to do well so I've not yet leveraged my years of video ability since there is little payoff for the effort...yet.

That said, the *real* reason that I (and millions of others) can do all this stuff is due to the critical mass that's been achieved with enabling technologies. The accessibility of digital cameras/camcorders, audio recorders, and tools on the computer to manipulate and deliver content to the myriad of web service hosted offerings are just waiting for us to use 'em -- and use them we are. The more we leverage these building blocks and deliver increasingly relevant and interesting content that will be available to anyone, anywhere....the more we'll drive increasing amounts of our attention from traditional media to the internet.

Man...I'd hate to be working for a newspaper, radio/TV station or book publisher, just knowing that my industry and business can't help but be disintermediated at some point in the not-too-distant future.