Connecting the Dots

Just look at the signs...

Lots of speculation about Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) joining Apple's board. Articles by John Markoff in the New York Times, John C. Dvorak writing for Marketwatch, along with a spot-on counter opinion to Dvorak from Dana Blankenhorn, all look at this from a variety of perspectives.

No one really knows.

Instead of trying to look narrowly at the aspects of the Schmidt announcement and the possibilities surrounding an Apple-Sun merger (and whether or not it alone makes sense), it's more useful to stand back and observe as many signs as possible occurring simultaneously worldwide:

• The desktop operating platform as the core of your computing experience is over. Observers smarter than I am have taken a macro, global look at the internet and are now clearly agreeing on the internet-as-a-platform (Dion Hinchliffe has, in my view, the best blog out there on the subject and wrote this great article you should read to understand more).

Tim O'Reilly, head of O'Reilly & Associates, wrote the seminal article on Web 2.0 (and coined the term) which is a must-read along with this OpenBusiness interview if you'd like to understand the forces driving internet-as-a-platform.

• As further evidence of the increasing dilution of server operating system dominance, Linux is gaining a global foothold. With the acceleration of internet-as-a-platform and companies (like Google) running their business on Linux, Apple has to be looking at the future of their business as one that will be increasingly dependent upon internet-centric services and not just focusing on desktop-centric operating systems.

Recent experiences I've had with the Ubuntu Linux distribution have been nothing short of stunning in this distro's elegance, ease of installation and use, and design. Since most hosted Web service offerings are FINALLY (and mostly) browser and operating system agnostic, developments like this just provide more options for access and make Apple's (or even Microsoft's) focus on desktop operating systems increasingly irrelevant.

• Remember when Google hired Vint Cerf (father of the internet)? No question this was about global internet architecture, offense and defense around regulatory and global internet politicking and positioning Google correctly and strategically.

• Speaking of our pals in Redmond, why do you think Ray Ozzie is the primary thought leader and technology head? He totally and completely groks what is happening globally and is probably better suited than anyone there to figure out how to leverage what Microsoft can do and position the company to dominate certain on-ramps (like tools and servers) to this internet-as-a-platform.

Sun totally and completely "gets it" with respect to internet-as-a-platform. Google's entire business is based upon this new platform and the collective (and global) participation of people who can access their business in an instant. Apple understands human-computer interaction better than any other company in the world and is (arguably) in the perfect position to be THE on-ramp for people accessing internet services regardless of device (and the only prediction I'll make is that Apple will accelerate their expertise delivering it in a multitude of devices like phones, tablets, enhanced iPods, etc.).

I remember how filled with glee many investors were in the late eighties and early nineties when they finally understood the gross margins Microsoft enjoyed. Heavy investment up front and laughingly low replication costs downstream. The internet makes this value proposition even more attractive since the cost of transmitting bits is considerably less expensive.

That's why Apple needs Eric Schmidt and why their business must be internet-centric going forward. Whether they need to merge with Sun to make that happen will remain to be seen.

There's no magic to being Signal instead of Noise

The concept of a signal to noise ratio is a fundamental one in electrical engineering. My first real exposure to it was buying my first stereo system in college and getting the pitch from the sales guy on why all the dweebezaarb's and flipper-flappers on the more expensive receiver, speakers, cables improved the signal-to-noise ratio. Better signal and less noise was, of course, good. Good in stereo's, radio's, cordless phones, video systems, whatever systems where frequency strength (and minimized noise) is a good thing.

Every where I turn today I see people struggling with how to get their signal (i.e., value proposition, marketing message, sales pitch) out to those tuned to receive it when these same people are being bombarded by so much signal from others that the combined signals are creating incredible amounts of noise.

Email marketing (to prospects at least) is pretty much dead. Direct mail, in a sort of surprising twist vs. where everyone seems to be focused now (internet marketing), is growing at 7-8% per year. In the same way that people leapt on email marketing when the internet took off, everyone seems to now be buzzing about viral marketing as though there is now some new, free, magic method of creating demand and selling goods and services.

Like anything else, there isn't a magic bullet, secret sauce or effortless way of reaching, persuading, and touching people with your value proposition. Clients hire me expecting I have all the answers, can point them to the perfect technology or can whip out the mythical Top Ten List they could follow to ensure that if their signal is high, maybe the highest, that fast growth will ensue.

If it were only so.

Product development on one Macbook Pro

Many people have observed this in the past, but it's always been interesting to me that when I'm at various technology conferences, I'm not the only one in the room with a glowing Apple logo on my laptop.

Several alpha geek buddies of mine have been switching from PC-only to Macbook Pro's running Mac OS X, Windows XP and, in some cases, Linux. They now have just one box with concurrent development and testing happening on one machine vs. the two or three they used to have on their desks at one time. Makes life alot easier for them.

The promise is operating systems that run seamlessly on the Mac like this video on YouTube. The reality is that Apple's Boot Camp, Parallels desktop and the upcoming VMWare for Mac OS X are three different approaches each with pros and cons -- and none seem to live up to the promise of being 100% and fully robust quite yet.

Where is the "A, B, C" comparison between these three approaches? Or is it too early, specifically for VMWare since it's not shipping? All I know is that the usefulness of at least running Windows on my Macbook Pro will be phenomenal. I'd still like to read a comprehensive overview.

Rumor has it that Apple may include virtualization software in Leopard which would be great. Double clickable Windows executables in OS X anyone?

Conference with 500 people

Almost immediately after Skype announced a preview of something called Skypecasting, I had two thoughts instantly: "what a great opportunity to seize and build my brand even further" and "too bad people on regular phone lines can't participate and that you're only limited to 100 people."

Days later I'm on Skype's partner page trolling through the offerings and come across HighSpeedConferencing. This site offered the solution to the last two problems: people on regular phone lines anywhere could call-in to the same conference the Skype users were in and the ceiling on attendees leapt to 500!

You can also get a permanent conference number for pre-scheduling, Web-based conference controls and more. Very impressive.

They've got premium features coming and I hope they offer call recording as an option. Since the quality of VoIP is so far superior in bandwidth than the cheesey 8khz frequency offered through plain old telephone service, my hope is that they offer at least 16khz recording capability. If they did so, every podcaster and audio conference holder would instantly choose them and use their service for interviews, Skypecast-like global audio conferences, and much more.

If you use Skype or Gizmo, perform podcast interviewing or are someone who'd benefit from building a global brand through the use of mass event audio conferences, this is your solution.

Is Second Life the future of Collaboration and Social Software?

Just like the early stages of MySpace -- arguably now THE largest community with a purported 100 million registrants -- Second Life is seemingly getting alot of attention from brands trying to create a beachhead within the metaverse since so many people are flocking to this very well executed virtual space.

Diverse brands are attempting to get in front of the thought leaders within Second Life specifically:

• Starwood Hotels is constructing a new hotel in-world
  
• A PR firm, Text100, opens "an office"
• Rock group DuranDuran is planning shows and U2 already has
  

...and there are many more. If you want to read more about my thoughts surrounding Second Life and Collaboration, etc., take a peek at this post from June.

But what if you could talk and fully collaborate with anyone online regardless of language?

Here's something that I came across today that is one of the most profound developments I've seen yet that made me stop and think about the real-time collaborative impacts of virtual meetings, discussions, and human interactions as the world flattens and humankind is connected: on--the-fly language translation! I could go on and on but this YouTube video does a much better job of explaining it (and means much more if you've been in-world at Second Life...but it's still amazing either way).

Second Life is free and your only investment is the time it takes to poke around and get your head in to the context of this virtual world game. Even if you don't invest any time ongoing, you owe it to yourself to at least peek at the future. The connection of our psyche, our spirit and our intrinsic value -- vs. our clothes, car, skin color, language or other human elements that often get in the way of focusing on each other as people, on an idea or the solution to a problem -- will ultimately be the overall value of an increasingly connected world and one that seems only able to be manifested with a richer, deeper immersive virtual space.

Citizen's League Event

Moments ago I snapped this picture having participated in a Citizen's League event at Minnesota Public Radio. That's Sean Kershaw, the Executive Director, doing the wrap-up with my fellow participants Garrick Van Buren, Tom Swain and Jen Alstad pictured. To my right (and not in the photo) was Jean LeVander King and our discussion host, Jack Uldrich.

Since there were so many participants who'd asked for the URL to this blog, I thought it would be interesting to demonstrate the immediacy and capability of my mobile personal publishing tool, the Palm Treo 700p.

While not the method I'd normally use to create a post, it does illustrate how incredibly easy, simple and fast one enabling tool has become. I can only imagine, say, the next political convention where a multi-author blog is set up for near real-time perspectives unfiltered. Video posted instantly will perhaps be easier, but suffice to say that these communications technologies are accelerating in their efficacy and efficiency and will most certainly influence the civic engagement processes.

Design for Web 2.0

One of my client's is involved in a web asset creation that will have lots of functionality. To their credit, they are HYPER focused on design as they totally understand that look, feel and all the other sensory delights that come from great design are mission-critical for their audience.

As I've been a confidant of their web developer and them, I've tried to listen closely to what works and what doesn't. Perhaps I'm really jaded, but there is little that makes me gasp and say "Wow!" anymore. Until I saw these 15 pages of thumbnails leading me to fabulous design.

Though I've spent some time at Web Design From Scratch, I hadn't before gone to some of the links placed there by Ben Hunt from  Scratchmedia. If you want to get a sense of some great design, follow the Links at the bottom of this page and you'll get an eyefull...that's where I found the site-of-sites linked to above.

By the way, why is it that many of the truly awesome graphic design magazines come out of the UK? I've also been coming across what I call "big thinkers" blogs and -- when I click on their about pages -- discover that they too are from the UK. Perhaps they just know more than we do that design matters...alot.

CTD podcast for August 19, 2006

Today's podcast is the first one I've done since May 23rd...nearly three months ago. No, I'm not going to do one "once per quarter" as some have suggested, but I've just been too busy to focus on it *and* I've wanted to line up others to talk to about meaningful and important stuff. I had grown a bit weary of hearing myself talk and -- since I get so much energy talking and brainstorming with others -- that's what I intend to do and I think it'll be a helluva lot more interesting.

This show refers to a couple of Pew Internet studies (and I heartily endorse their research and it's free!). In the next few weeks, I'll be posting a free PDF paper on some of my thoughts related to the explosion of the Participation Culture and what I'm seeing, what it means, and the dots I think are connecting.

Download or listen to the CTD podcast

Free books in Minnesota

One of the blogs I follow is one on the future of advertising by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Initially very enamored with MIT's Open Courseware initiative, I was even more pleased to discover -- by way of their advertising blog -- that there is a cutting edge open, free textbook publishing company right here in Minnesota (bugs me that I had to read a blog from Boston to find out about something 25 minutes from my office...but I digress).

The company is Freeload Press and they state their mission as:

Freeload Press, Inc. began in 2004 with the goal of using sponsorship to deliver more affordable course materials. A collaboration of academics, authors, publishers and media executives developed the free + download = Freeload model, with textbooks supported by commercial sponsors. Now, with authors, books, and sponsors in place--and over 100 colleges using Freeload Press, Inc. course materials--we are expanding sponsorship model for use by other publishers.

Back in the early 90's, I was a consultant to Harcourt Brace College Publisher's in Fort Worth, TX -- a division which appears to have been absorbed into some other Harcourt business unit. My work with them was in a startup new media division delivering value-added material on CD-ROM, shrinkwrapped in the back of new college textbooks in the hope that students would buy new ones over used. Even then, the college textbook was plummeting in sales as the market (students and parents) railed against the prices college publishers demanded.

I often wondered back then about the efficacy of ebooks. Aware of the technical limitations (textbooks are printed at 1200dpi and screens are either 72dpi (Mac) or 96dpi (PC)), I still could already visualize ebooks at some point replacing textbooks. I also wondered, "Why are there dozens of competing psychology textbooks? Geography, math, biology ones?" It seemed as though there was a ton of redundancy and inefficiency in this marketplace since it was highly doubtful there could be THAT much difference in these disciplines to warrant so many texts on the same subjects.

MIT's Open Courseware project was begun to essentially collaborate with the rest of the market (higher education) on baseline courses that they ALL have to deliver (but read their site and draw your own conclusions) so each higher education institution could instead focus on their respective competitive advantage. Freeload Press is clearly focused directly on the need for a budgetary constrained market (education overall) to have access to knowledge (which is accelerating toward free anyway) and enable and empower all of us to move the world forward through superior levels of education (which benefits us all).

There have been grandiose ideas of sponsored educational materials before...just look at what Chris Whittle has done. Still, something tells me the stars are aligned this time with a more fundamental understanding of the power of the internet, that there isn't a free lunch and someone has to pay, and the great success of the open source software movement and manifestations of the collective adding value in the form of Wikipedia.

I'm gonna keep my eye on Freeload Press as I know they're on to something.

Providing them a clue to Web 2

Look at my blog picture. I'm a 28 year old technologist in the body of a slightly older guy (you gotta guess how slight by looking at my picture over there) and yet I'm stunned that others my age have zero understanding of the tsunami of energy being poured into social software, online community, applications, connecting apps and creating mashups, content creation and consumption, and all the other touch points being pretty much driven by those under 35.

Maybe it's because the control points are in the hands of people my age who are fairly out of touch with that tsunami and are instead laying on the beach looking at one another saying, " Hmmm....wonder why the ocean is rushing out like that? Let's go down there and pick up some shells." Unless they wake up now, they're gonna drown.

I've been wrestling with how to effectively communicate with the clueless and get better at providing them a clue to Web 2 (Web 2.0 that is...but using the "dot oh" ruins the rhyme). I can sell, persuade, market, engage in business development activities and generally convince even the most stubborn to at least concede that something is up -- so how come it's so hard to package something up and help people understand it quickly and easily?

*Finally* mainstream media is talking and writing about the things that are pulling people's attention away from what their respective industries offer. Since those people presently clueless seem to be gaining most of their knowledge and information from that same mainstream media -- I guess I should be a bit more magnanimous and kind in my thoughts about those just a bit further behind on understanding what's going on.

Things are moving too fast though.

How to predict the future of Web 2.0?

When you're faced with a challenge at work, in your personal life or are helping someone you know problem solve, what process do you follow? If you're someone considering (or building) the next great Web 2.0 application or product, what are you looking at to decide if you should even bother to build it?

Right this minute I'm involved in several initiatives that are blazing trails. Doing things that have kinda, sorta been done before but not fully, not efficiently or in a particular way. So to be truly innovative, gain attention and create something new, it's important to look behind you at what's been done, what worked and what didn't. Then gain a sense of where things are at right now...and only then make decisions on next steps.

I'm a bit of a Clayton Christenson devotee (he's a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS)). I've read several of his books and listened to him speak (and, by the way, I delight in his discussions surrounding open source). One of his many observations and challenges to Harvard is surrounding their case study method. It's basis is rooted in looking back at what worked, dissecting it within the context of the time it happened and the macro and micro economic environment, and figure out what were the key elements that defined best practices and success criteria.

The problem is that their case study method is historical in nature and not focused on the future.

*Free* Mobile Phone Calls with Eqo

It's one thing to read the press releases and watch the moves made by the telephony giants and the upstarts, and quite another to personally experience the technologies that are changing the face of communications and develop an intuitive understanding for the "why" behind these moves.

Eqo is just such an upstart and I experienced it last night and damn, it's pretty cool.

You've undoubtedly read about Clearwire, the company that is building out a Wimax wireless network. Their $900M investment from Intel and Motorola. Tuesday's announcement by Sprint Nextel on their several billion dollar investment plans for Wimax. Why all this activity and all this investment...and what does this have to do with telephony?

Because always on and always connected is increasingly being demanded by seemingly everyone, once these Wimax footprints are in place providing internet connectivity the possibilities are endless to make money. It's just that making money from voice calls isn't going to continue for long in an age of Wimax city-wide deployments and I predict we'll see a mad scramble by others to invest defensively and offensively in VoIP technologies.

You know Skype and their free and really cheap calls, right? Well last night I downloaded Eqo's thin little Java client for my Palm Treo 700p, installed the app to my Mac, and watched them perform as I selected one of my Skype contacts in the Eqo app on my Treo and clicked "call". Suddenly my Skype client started a conference call that dialed my chosen contact and called my Treo back at the same time!

I carried on a conversation that was really quite decent. Nowhere near as good as a Skype-to-Skype call and yet nearly as good as a regular mobile call, but the HUGE deal is that it was free and used zero mobile minutes!

Since a Skype client isn't available yet for the Palm OS-driven Treo 700p (but is for the Windows 700w), direct calling from the device itself isn't yet possible so going through a third party like Eqo is the only alternative. The Eqo Java client is a little flaky and is having screen refresh and click issues. Still, I have to admit being pretty blown away that it worked!

UPDATE: That was fast! Just got an email from a former colleague that pointed out an obvious fact I didn't make in my post: since EQO fires up Skype which, in turn, calls BOTH my intended contact AND my mobile phone, I burn up mobile minutes. So EQO is useful primarily for country-to-country calling where a mobile call would be grossly expensive and SkypeOut minutes modestly so. I stand corrected and won't be posting after midnight again!

A Second Mobile TypePad Post

Thought I'd do another quick post outside to show a better photo and because I'm thinking about how powerful this little mobile application is for a bunch of reasons.

Though we've been able to moblog (use a mobile phone to snap and upload photos) for some time, it hasn't been brain-dead-simple to do for the average person. This app makes it so.

Imagine someone sets up a multi-author blog before a political rally and gives out credentials to several trusted participants. Then an incident erupts. Numerous participants snap photos, type up a paragraph and click "Post" in the app. Instantly there are multiple angles and perspectives both visual and written.

Next will come this possibility (and higher fidelity) photos, video and text as Wimax gets deployed and people can use a smartphone connected to Wimax to send faster.

This post brought to you by TypePad Mobile

 

TypePad has rolled out TypePad Mobile. Having purchased SplashBlog (which never worked for me), this application works well (though there is too much space below the photo and other tweaks which are necessary to make a post look decent).

What do I like at first glance? Posting from my Treo 700p...that is AWESOME. What don't I like? Can't create hyperlinks so to see more, go to: http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2006/08/introducing_typ.html

Nothing is perfect and I see the possibilities with this *very* useful addition to the TypePad service.

Open Source and Commercial Software

Since I am a huge fan of open source and always look first for an open source package before paying for a commercial one, I had sort of a troubling adventure this afternoon with the open source PHPSurveyor and ended up going with the commercial SurveyMonkey.

Needing to send out a survey to a client's customers, I originally used a hosted CRM offering which had too many bugs to be useful. 36,000 emails went to one recipient, for example, and it's still a sore subject so don't ask. Next I chose PHPSurveyor since I could install, configure and run it myself.

I can put this stuff together pretty fast, so from install to config to survey creation to use was about two and a half hours. The emails being sent out hiccup'ed and stopped after the first batch. After goofing around for another hour I decided -- with my client's blessing -- to just use a paid commercial survey offering since time is of the essence.

In the past I've used several $400-$1,000 per year survey and polling services and had a buddy who'd used SurveyMonkey to great result. I signed up, built the survey and was ready to send it out in less than an hour.

Though PHPSurveyor is free and SurveyMonkey is $19.95 per month, it doesn't take much of a math quant to figure out that the extra 1.5 hours I wasted with PHPSurveyor was worth more than $19.95 (and I'm certain another 1-2 hours would've been invested to achieve a successful survey send).

Unfortunately, there seems to be an expectation in the open source community that only propellerheads are willing to install and use packages and climb the learning curves to figure them out and workaround the unfinished or buggy pieces. Sometimes guys like me -- with only small propellers on their beanies -- want to take advantage of what's available without getting under the hood and wrenching on the engine when you just want to drive over to the store for a gallon of milk.

Right now, there are about 15 packages I'm interested in using and recommending to colleagues and clients but find that there is little support available, a dearth of talent to implement them for clients and deploy them, and do-it-yourself installation and deployment is, well, challenging.

How can the supply of open source meet the demands of users? What's needed to make packages more seamless and easy?

McKinsey & Co. Predicts One Impact of Shift in Attention

When meeting with executives who care about the strategic directions of their companies, it's often challenging to convince them of the dramatic and accelerating shifts occurring as people -- especially the coveted 18-34 year old demographic -- shifts their attention away from TV, newspapers, radio, magazines and other mainstream media.

By way of Jeff Jarvis today comes discussion of an Ad Age article entitled, "McKinsey Study Predicts Continuing Decline in TV Selling Power."

The article opens with, "McKinsey & Co. is telling a host of major marketers that by 2010, traditional TV advertising will be one-third as effective as it was in 1990."  Though this doesn't come as much of a surprise to those of us already using digital video recorders (e.g., TiVo) to time-shift television and skip the ads. Or completely ignoring ad words, banner ads and other in-your-face attempts to entice us to click on them.

Here's what leapt out at me from the article...

Time and Great Grandpa's Pocketwatch

We know that time is an artificial measurement and a concept whose raison d'etre is to provide a way for humans to synchronize all that we do and perform a sophisticated measurement function. As our planet has accelerated toward an increasingly internet-connected, synchronous symphony of communications between we humans, time has quickly become a gating factor in the way we work together...and when we are able to do so.

In the U.S., the advent of the railroad -- and the need to efficiently synchronize its schedule with all those who increasingly depended on it -- caused a ripple effect throughout our country in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Watches became more than a rich man's fashion accessory. They became a necessity to do business and watch companies proliferated. The telegraph was used to send out time synching notifications so that railroad personnel could sync and set their watches to Greenwich Mean Time and thus could keep this primary economic engine moving the country forward.

All of these thoughts about time came flooding back to me when I came into possession today of my great Grandfather's pocketwatch. This beautifully crafted gold Hamilton watch was manufactured in 1902 and I wound it, set the time, and have been observing its timekeeping all day and comparing it to my computer clock (which connects to the atomic clock in Colorado via the internet).

This more than 100 year old watch has been keeping perfect time.

My great Grandfather, John Borsch, had a store in Delano, Minnesota next to the railroad line. As it turns out, I popped the back off of this watch and it stated, "Made Expressly for A. L. Mealey by Hamilton Watch Co.".  Mr. Mealey was also a merchant in Delano and my great Grandfather obviously purchased this watch from him as Mealey was a Hamilton reseller...though I have several other cheap railroad watches that John must've traded for when railroad men couldn't pay their bills and he certainly could've just used one of those.

What strikes me as I hold this watch -- which makes me think of him holding it, checking the time and has been a stunningly powerful experience today -- is how RADICALLY things have changed in what is really a remarkably short time in human history.

Why I won't be using Google's Picasa Web Albums

Now that there is a Mac client for Google's Picasa Web Albums service and I'm a long-time Gmail user (only Gmail users can get access for now), I thought I'd check it out to see if there was yet another photo sharing service where my nearly 7GB's of digital photos might be stored.

Few people bother to read terms and conditions nor do they understand that the link underneath actually loads a web page that has the same Terms of Service on it. Google presenting the Terms of Service in the manner you see below virtually guarantees that users will be disinclined to scroll through the text in this little box (vs. clicking the Terms of Service link beneath for a more enjoyable reading experience on a full web page). This is a pretty sneaky way to ensure that as many people as possible bypass reading the Terms and start uploading as quickly as possible:

Similar to the recent controversy over YouTube's new "all your base belong to us" copyright terms, it appears that Google has done nearly the same thing with Picasa:

Your Rights
Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Picasa Web Albums. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Picasa Web Albums and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Picasa Web Albums, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, distribute and publish such Content through Picasa Web Albums, including RSS or other content feeds offered through Picasa Web Albums, and other Google services.  In addition, by submitting, posting or displaying Content which is intended to be available to the general public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, distribute and publish such Content for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services.

You own your content but Google can essentially do whatever they want with publically available albums. Though albums can be set to be "unlisted" and therefore not listed in a directory, it's a security-through-obscurity method since Google doesn't offer an option to password protect albums and instead suggests, "Since they (albums) don't appear publicly, they're accessible much like an unlisted phone number – anyone who knows the exact name of an album can view its contents, but there's no directory for finding them. For this reason, you may want to consider giving your unlisted albums more obscure album titles." Again, the default is public and most people will choose this option.

Traditional media copyright has become a sad state of affairs and has restricted and eliminated much of our future public domain. In anticipation of the acceleration of user generated content, the Creative Commons was born to provide workable copyright protections for a digital age. This may be a bit harsh, but it's kind of sad that companies that should know better (e.g., Google) wouldn't try to surreptiously grab control of user's content with a Trojan horse of an offering intended to falsely lure in the unsuspecting.

9/6/06 UPDATE: Interesting discussion over at Google Blogscoped about this post...and I weighed in on the comment stream.

Bad Mobile Web Experience #2

Had about 45 minutes free today and I used them to poke around and look at Java midlets for my Palm Treo 700p. There are numerous sites and tons of these little apps which I've already found to be quite useful and I want more of them.

First I hammered on Palm's site and finally tried a non-700p supported version of the IBM WebSphere Micro Environment which hasn't been updated since June of 2005, over one year ago. I searched and searched for newer versions...to no avail.

Some of these midlets run...some don't. There are roughly three steps to open the IBM environment, select the app, click "Launch" and then it runs...sometimes. Why isn't this environment refreshed? Or is it for other platforms?

So this begs the question: why wouldn't Palm facilitate both a new version of IBM's environment *and* make it easier to find these pretty wonderful midlets? It seems to me that it would help drive sales since applications make hardware useful -- but many of these midlets are free so perhaps I've answered my own question as to why commercial vendors like Palm don't bother even though it would sell hardware and drive adoption.

I've also found that Palm's Software Connection is marginally useful and missing applications. EverythingTreo is better, but many apps I've found elsewhere aren't here either (where is the comprehensive directory?). Again, software sells hardware and it is simply far too difficult to find software for the Treo 700p.