Connecting the Dots

2007 Is going to be a GREAT year

Every single New Year's Eve I get atypically enthusiastic about the upcoming year. Maybe it's because my birthday is so close to Christmas (I often got presents as a kid for both my birthday and Christmas combined so I felt bad) and I often get pretty melancholy on my birthday looking back over the year that's past.

But by the time New Year's Eve rolls around, my default nature as a happy-assed, glass-is-51%-full guy is eager for the new year to start! Every day is filled with possibility, but a brand new year is a huge chunk of measured time that makes a guy think ahead further than normal.

2007 is shaping up to be a phenomenal year in technology. Web 2.0 is gaining traction with developers and rich internet applications, the service oriented architecture and Web services folks and others are looking at the explosion in amazingly good Web applications and we'll see an acceleration in useful tools and building blocks shipping next year.

The onrush of the collective consciousness being connected to the Internet -- manifested in social software, blogs/podcasts/videos, new methods of communications as well as collaborative applications -- is poised to disrupt industries, empower consumers, shift the political process and much more in 2007.

I'm not going to prognosticate and make predictions other than that I stepped on the scale this morning and will probably join the millions of others in losing some weight in January which I predict will be successful!

I'd like to wish you a Happy New Year. Stay safe, take more risks, pay closer attention to loved ones and friends, find ways to participate online in ways that make sense for you, send me a dollar and, of course, keep reading my blog.

Patents: Ocean Tomo ETF May Spark the Trolls?

As our world accelerates toward the connection of human consciousness made possible by the ever-increasing capability of the Internet and the applications that sit on top of this "platform", the intellectual capital contained within ideas, inventions, new processes and methodologies will become more valuable on a global basis.

If you've got the next, great Web 2.0 idea; a process you've figured out how to make more efficient; a disruptive or creative innovation you've figured out how to take to market; or are trying to understand where you should be investing for the next couple of decades; you really owe it to yourself to understand what the smartest people are doing in the realm of intellectual property and capital...

...or risk missing out on the next great wave of investment or a patent troll suing you for infringement.

I've written before about the possible patent troll Nathan Myhrvold (though the jury is still out on his actual troll status). Myhrvold has been working toward "cornering the market" on some aspects of intellectual property by patenting as many ideas and processes as possible...and then licensing them or preparing to do so. Even though he's expressed that he's taking the high road where trolls fear to tread, I'd bet that his firm (Intellectual Ventures) will take advantage of what the patent trolls are doing if the opportunity arises (suing a company that might be infringing on a patent they purchased from some other inventor, etc.).

How can you make money on intellectual property and -- if you're an inventor, an entrepreneur or involved in managing your company's patent portfolio -- what do you need to be aware of going forward in a world where patent trolls may prevail?

Prediction: Apple Will Own Mass Market Web Applications

Web 2.0 is about the Internet-as-a-platform. The operating system as the focal point of our knowledge and information life is over. The next phase of the Internet will be dominated by those who understand that enabling people is the key. Not just providing packaged solutions, content, advertising and other stuff tossed in our faces hoping that it's what we will buy...but giving us tools to assemble, create and deliver content and chunks of application functionality that we choose and consume. No one does tools better than Apple which makes me predict that Apple will own mass market application creation and delivery.

Let's look at a few obvious facts (with some opinion interlaced) so you can follow my logic:

1) NeXT, Steve Jobs' company bought by Apple which is the foundation of today's Mac OS X operating system, delivered WebObjects in 1996, the first object oriented Web application server enabling rapid Web application development. Patents like this one -- done with WebObjects clearly in mind -- points the way to what I'm starting to sense is how Apple could very well "own" the mass market Web application space.

2) Building on the unix foundation from NeXT and delivered as the operating system we know today as Mac OS X, at MacWorld in January of 2006, Apple delivers the next iteration of their iLife suite of products that delivers a completely integrated series of applications for video (iMovie), photos (iPhoto), audio (GarageBand), DVD creation (iDVD‚ and adds Web publishing (iWeb). Critics laud the seamless and elegant integration of these applications and they're an amazingly powerful catalyst for those deeply involved in the participation culture

3) March 22, 2006: Google releases Google Pages, an amazingly simple (and I think embarrassingly so) Web page creator. They also buy Writely, release Google Calendar, and host of other services like Google Reader, Patents, etc.  Hmmm....could Pages be the way Google will enable people to assemble numerous pieces of functionality together to create their own Web applications? Yeah...but only if people want their stuff to look like my Grandpa built it in 1997.

4) August 29, 2006: Dr. Eric Schmidt joins Apple's Board of Directors. He's a smart guy and Google's hot, but if you think at all deeply about the implications of this you'll understand that Google is the only company in a position to be the engine of the internet-as-a-platform and Schmidt recognizes that the DNA of Google means they design like my Grandpa who, by the way, never used a computer. Schmidt must understand that the totality of what Apple offers, their design sense and their ability to execute is the perfect front-end to the back-end Google delivers so well.

5) Real Simple Syndication (RSS) accelerates in 2006 as the preferred content syndication method and virtually any updating content is rendered "RSS-able". It's still tough to cobble together a bunch of RSS feeds and republish them in any meaningful way, but just about all content is fed by RSS and can be consumed easily. Just high end tools that can incorporate RSS feeds within an overall framework are missing

6) All during 2006, Web services proliferate within the Web 2.0, Internet-as-a-platform paradigm and much of the functionality is delivered as "gadgets" or "widgets" or code snippets. These small chunks of functionality enable people to cut code and paste it into their own blog, social site area or Web site. Thousands of these Web gadgets and widgets exist (see Widgetbox, Google Gadgets) but each has their own respective look-n-feel (pretty cheesy too) and it's NOT simple to build a Web page or a Web application incorporating these and have it look good. NOTE: if you want to get some sense of how these Web services can be mashed together (i.e., mashups), then take a peek at ProgrammableWeb's directory of mashups here.

So how will Apple own mass market Web application creation and delivery?

Off for the Holiday...

Probably no posting for a few days as I focus on family and friends. Be safe and enjoy your own time.

All excited about the Apple iPhone

When Wall Street gets overly excited, I get nervous. Today's Wall Street Journal had an article entitled, "Waiting on Apple Cellphone Call" (paid site with preview only) which is about summed up in this snippet:

"Several recent analyst reports forecast that Apple would sell millions of phones within a few years, bringing in billions of dollars in revenue. Some analysts go even further, predicting the impact of an Apple cellphone on wireless carriers, chip makers and other parts suppliers."

Then in Q2, 2007, Apple is going to introduce the replicator to make any possible product out of any matter, the Holodeck which will render any other movie, music, theatre or meatspace experience a moot point, and a new teleportation device enabling all of us to instantly leap into extra space dimensions or parallel universes and thus Apple will completely disrupt every Earth-centric industry.

Come on...I'm an Apple fanboy and own about everything they make (and multiples of each). I'm also enthusiastic enough about Apple that a large percentage of my investment portfolio is in Apple stock...but even I throttle my enthusiasm! I was in Hawaii in November of 1983 when Jobs introduced the Macintosh to the company (I was with a manufacturer's rep company at the time as Apple had no direct sales force and we and 26 other firms were it in the U.S.) and I was pumped about the product, but even then could pragmatically understand the challenges Apple faced introducing a new paradigm in computing.

Sheesh...I thought Apple was going to introduce a tablet PC three years ago! Do I think Apple is going to introduce an Apple mobile phone?

Microsoft RSS Patent Update: Manipulate, Maneuver and Morph

After reading this post and writing this one, I have more clarity on Microsoft's approach with RSS since I just got done reading the whole patent (can you see my eyes glazing over?).

They're NOT attempting to control the RSS protocol, but their patent is a platform play designed around controlling the RSS processes and paths in order to manipulate, maneuver and morph RSS itself. The operative and important paragraph is this one at the end:

[0150] The web content syndication platform described above can be utilized to manage, organize and make available for consumption content that is acquired from the Internet. The platform can acquire and organize web content, and make such content available for consumption by many different types of applications. These applications may or may not necessarily understand the particular syndication format. An application program interface (API) exposes an object model which allows applications and users to easily accomplish many different tasks such as creating, reading, updating, deleting feeds and the like. In addition, the platform can abstract away a particular feed format to provide a common format which promotes the useability of feed data that comes into the platform. Further, the platform processes and manages enclosures that might be received via a web feed in a manner that can make the enclosures available for consumption to both syndication-aware applications and applications that are not syndication-aware.

My "co-opting RSS" concern from the last post still stands and this is why...

Microsoft to own RSS?

Some have predicted 2007 will be the "year of RSS". I view it as the "lubrication" for internet delivered content and it clearly is what enabled the podcasting phenomena to happen, was key to the rise of blogging and memetracking, and is vital for all of us to collect and aggregate the exponentially rising amount of information coming at us from every corner of the 'net.

So what if Microsoft owned RSS and made everybody pay for the privilege to use it?

Reading Dave Winer's blog just now I came across this post with some intrigue over questions of his involvement in RSS (which I won't comment on since I don't have any facts) but included a *very* disturbing link to a patent filed by Microsoft on RSS! So much for them hiring Ray Ozzie and ostensibly embracing the Web-centric ecosystem.

I just skimmed the patent and will read it in full tonight. At first glance it simply appears that they're positioning it as a platform and all processes central to that RSS platform are within the patent itself. I expect that much smarter and more experienced corners of the internet are going to shout this one down. If not, 2007 will be the year RSS was co-opted and became yet another choke point for innovation owned by our pals in Redmond.

PC Sales Growth Slumping in US but Smartphones Growing

Just read this article in Macworld online about PC Sales Growth Slumping in the US:

PC sales growth in the U.S. sputtered to a halt in the third quarter of 2006, showing zero increase compared to last year, as vendors turned to strong overseas markets to generate revenue.

Worldwide, PC shipments grew 9.1 percent in the quarter, thanks to 13.5 percent growth outside the U.S., according to a report released Wednesday by IDC.

Knowing that smartphones are growing, I did a quick search and discovered this article about smartphone growth from Monday:

According to The NPD Group, the U.S. smartphone market has entered a significant growth spurt. October 2006 sales soared 230 percent from January of this year, rising from 216,000 units to nearly 715,000. On a quarterly basis in 2006, smartphone sales have risen more than four percentage points to more than 6 percent of new phones sold through October in the fourth quarter of 2006.

So if you're developing a Web asset/application or buying commercial software for your organization, wouldn't it be prudent to prepare for the certainty that your customers will be expecting and demanding to interact with you online from a variety of device types?

Virtual (and real) Friends: Importance of Authenticity

A common mistake people whom I mentor make is thinking that it's them -- and not their big-deal job, the company they work for or the access to others they possess -- which is attracting people to them. Granted, sometimes true, authentic friendships are forged in business, but I've worked with people again-n-again that take it personally when people have no time for them once their connection with that big deal job ends or the incentive for others to come after them dissolves.

Same thing happens virtually. This is increasingly problematic as more people invest their personal value into blogs, podcasts, vlogs, social networks and other places where seekers congregate. Instead of people being attracted only to those in big deal jobs or with big deal or hot companies, it's now increasingly your big deal value or thought leadership attracting others.

For example, I've had people connect with me and "pick my brain" over some initiative they're undertaking. I enjoy these connections and often receive considerably more than I give. But I have a finite amount of time each day and I charge top tier hourly rates for that time. When people ask me how long it took me to learn all of the stuff I know about technology, media and the internet, my reply is, "more than 25 years." I've been doing this all of my adult life and I can give all of my time away for free...but it has tons of value and I'm not a non-profit.

I've been with wildly successful companies and had big deal jobs within them. It was actually fairly easy to discern who had inauthentic and spurious motives or who I was actually connecting with as a human being. For the former, I'd be gracious but not personally engaged. For the latter, I still have friends from my first tech sales job that I talk to frequently.

FutureWeb: When will we be past significant customization?

Had yet *another* meeting today with a smart, accomplished marketing communications strategist wrestling with how to empower, enable and guide his client organizations toward understanding and embracing the new paradigm of Web 2.0, the participation culture and what Time magazine calls the Person of the Year (You).

The onrush of an internet connected world is doing far more than getting people to participate. It's compressing cycles all over the place from scientific research and peer review to information delivery, communication and collaboration. Since anything on the 'net is but a mouse click away, this connection is accelerating our ability to choose from an increasing number of alternatives and knowledge at our fingertips. I don't care what business you're in, if you don't recognize that disruption is coming at you from a myriad of sources, you're either asleep, not paying attention, or in a monastery.

The connected internet is fundamentally about technology enabling, so that's the perspective I'll come from in this post. During my discussions this morning, it was clear that this fellow's clients cover the gamut of non-profits who -- like those in education struggling for funding -- find themselves relying upon donor's and sponsors in order to carry out their mission.

Just like most under-funded small businesses, all of the open source, Web 2.0 and other information technology offerings are incredibly powerful but just out of reach for most of them. They're a box of parts where what these non-profits and small businesses need is a finished automobile they can climb in and drive.

Too much customization is needed for software to meet the needs of everyone? I'd disagree with that notion. I see a whole lot of customization occurring with quasi-platform plays like Typepad, Wordpress, social networking sites, and more.  I'm starting to see interesting drag-n-drop "information builders" emerging like YourMinis and even more basic news-centric portals like PageFlakes.

So here's the question for those of you willing to comment: will Apple/Google; Laszlo; Adobe; Microsoft; or some other prescient and forward looking company build the Web application assembly tool for we normal humans to use? It's pretty clear that we've GOT to evolve the software industry past buying or downloading (open source) software and then basically building the entire car from a box of parts.

Time: Bloggers react to *It's all about You*

I probably shouldn't be stunned that the LARGEST number of links and blog discussions I've yet seen on Techmeme were when Time magazine set their "Person of the Year: You".

For most of us in the Web 2.0, internet and participation culture (the basis of my Rise of the Participation Culture report), most of what this article said was obvious since we're living it. The important thing, however, is that the mainstream press is bringing it to the attention of the masses who are still amazingly clueless.

A year and a half ago I was talking to a C-level executive at a company about blogging, podcasting and virtual worlds. I admitted that the virtual world thing was a little far out...but then he looked at me and said, "What's blogging?" This man headed marketing.

It wasn't until BusinessWeek did a cover story on Second Life that senior executives and my close colleagues and friends stopped looking at me like I was some technoweenie goofball out of touch with reality or far too strategic to be practical.

To see participants (i.e., bloggers) participate in the Time magazine discussion seems appropriate, but if you read some of the perspectives it proves how people leap into the discussion and mold, shape and change public discourse. At least I hope the Time magazine folks are reading bloggers writings as I have. Some...not all...of bloggers' perspectives have deepened my understanding of what Time published.

Friday evening I was at a gathering where two people (my wife was one of them) vociferously railed against the alleged inaccuracies of Wikipedia and "all those bloggers whose opinions I don't care about" intimating that all of us out here were just ill informed spewers of opinion with little regard to facts.

Others there didn't seem to see much import to the whole participation thing. During the discussion, I politely pointed all those places where I begged to differ, but realized that these people were still up in the stands watching (instead of on the field playing like we who participate) and are distracted and only peripherally watching the game. Unfortunately, these are people who are involved in trend, marketing, product and service ideations (though all 40+ so maybe it was age-related) and should've been right next to me pushing on the membrane of the future instead of fearing it or minimizing its import.

So it's good to see bloggers react like this but then all of us -- those who "get it" and those yet to -- need to understand that 98% of the world is still unaware, doesn't care, sees it as noise and inefficiency instead of what it is: connecting humankind to the next level of social, fun, creativity, problem solving and efficiency. Just like the train, car, and airplane transported our bodies, the internet is transporting our minds.

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Mall of America and Ecommerce

My bride and I shop Amazon, iTunes Music Store, Costco and many other online retailers...so why are we slogging through the crowds at the Mall of America?

We want to see, touch and feel. Have an experience. Find bargains ( her anyway).  Have a fun lunch. People watch.

Visual merchandising and retail product placement is an optimized art and adept at playing to our emotions. I find myself much more objective and detached when buying online and thus less inclined to impulse buy. All the personalization and recommendation of world-class online retailing can't hold a candle to effective, meatspace retailing...yet.

Yugma Launches: Free Web Conferencing

Minnesota-based Yugma has officially launched with their free Web conferencing software. If you are actively online and using any of the collaboration, social or other participatory Web applications -- or hold meetings where any participants need to see what you're doing and may not have your applications -- there have been few, Web 2.0-ish ways of connecting with others quickly, seamlessly and for free.

I've extensively used Webex , Go-to-Meeting, Placeware (now Microsoft Live Meeting) and other solutions over the years. They're expensive and few are truly cross-platform. As a Mac user, it's always bugged me that I could watch Web conferences but had to grab my PC in order to host them (disclaimer: I acted as a consultant for Yugma for four months this year).

Since all of we full internet participants are using wiki's, collaboration apps like Foldera, Basecamp or Central Desktop -- or many of us are active Skype users and REALLY would like to show stuff from our computer to others while on a Skype conference call -- Yugma adds a robust, fast, seamless and easy way to share your desktop with others.

Much to my delight they've executed on an idea to build and deliver a Yugma widget! If you have a blog, are on a collaboration site, have a company intranet or your own Web site, you can now grab and add a button to allow anyone you're collaborating with to leap onto a Yugma session with you in about a minute.

Their Java application ensures that Windows, Mac and soon Linux users will be able to collaborate and share whatever each type of user happens to have on their respective desktops or are running as applications. The user interface is solid, they've incorporated all the tools you'll need, and have a premium version if you need lots of participants, scheduling or other premium features.

As more of us globally are connected via the 'net and collaborating or interacting with people increasingly geographically disbursed (or, God forbid, these folks aren't coming to the office due to pandemic flu, terrorist attack or natural disasters), solutions like Yugma will be absolutely critical to our ability to work and communicate.

The Yugma team is one of the most dedicated and hard working I've worked with for a long time and this application has been several years in the making. Do yourself a favor and check it out...it's free and I'll bet you'll find a need to use it in the next several days.

Internet Anonymity

After yesterday's Google post about them in a position for mass harvesting of data that can be monetized and/or learned from, I had an interesting experience today that's illustrative of how anonymous we are -- or aren't -- today on the 'net.

Now that more of us are participating online, we're leaving bread crumb trails all over the place. If you blog, are in social networks with public displays of information, or comment authentically, you're leaving shreds of yourself all over the 'net.

Case in point was someone performing mischief on a site where I'm posted. The interesting thing is that the wiki keeps a history of every IP address where an edit originated (similar to what Wikipedia does and where Adam Curry was busted editing his bio and a local Minnesota politician his bio...among other people who've done the same).

I figured it was someone else on the wiki list so I did a geolocated IP lookup of the IP address and discovered it originates in New York State and it displayed the actual city within it. Next I looked at that same IP address and the other edits that had occurred in the wiki history section and narrowed the possible field down to three other bloggers. Then I went to those three blogs and lo-and-behold...one guy blogs from his home in that exact city in New York.

This took less than ten minutes. Even though more and more of us have our IP addresses doled out by ISP's that show the IP address is in Reston, VA or some such centralized location, the availability of geolocation databases will undoubtedly become more transparent unless Congress enacts legislation. (Check yours here and also notice that, amusingly, "address" is misspelled "adress" in the URL...but it works and should show you your city, etc.).

Of course, the Federal government, law enforcement, and undoubtedly a host of commercial companies can buy these or have these databases just like they can acquire access to our complete, unadulterated credit profile. With the present rate of storing clickstream data and all the world's knowledge, if you're internet active and participatory you'll probably end up being a good chunk of a googol of data accessible to those who want to know about you, advertise to you or find you.

Google Patent Search = Free Ideas for Google?

Thinking about innovating? Maybe you're a Web application startup and think you have the next big idea? Until now, your choice in figuring out if someone has already patented your big idea has pretty much boiled down to hiring a patent attorney, paying for an exhaustive search, get legal interpretation on what's possible and then file your own patent if warranted.

While much of that legal work won't go away, Google's launch of a Patent Search beta goes a long way toward making the patent process just a tad bit more transparent -- and holds the promise of being an extremely empowering tool for understanding what intellectual property already exists.

I've written twice before (here and here) about Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures...an organization seemingly trying to "corner the market" on the most likely and viable patentable ideas in order to build a portfolio of licensable patents (every cell of my being rails against that, by the way).

Here's the possible "gotcha" with Google's new "Global Database of Ideas" patent search offering and reveals yet another part of their strategy to infiltrate every corner of the Web and monetize every possible data stream.

Traveling...

Traveling today as I'm working with a fun, social site startup that you're going to hear alot about...be back Thursday.

Design Matters. Design Adds Value.

So often I work with director-level to senior executives on product ideation (focused brainstorming) and form always takes a back seat to function. If it's software, the data model and architecture gets 80% of the attention and human factors work (the user interface) gets 20% of the effort.

I've worked at companies where the entire development organization -- almost at the last minute -- says in meetings as the ship date approaches, "...and then we probably should get moving on the user interface" as though the part of the product IN THE USERS' FACE AND WHAT THEY'LL USE DAILY is some sort of afterthought!

You've also probably purchased products that you wish had gone just a little bit further with product quality. A case in point is my purchase of several headphones to use with Skype. Most are in the $40 range and -- after going through three sets with twisty cords and crappy design -- I finally spent $80 for a high end Logitech model. Great design, has its own case, and I delight every time I open the case and use the headset.

I love metaphors. When I talk about design importance things like, "...and if design didn't matter in publishing, we'd all be reading courier font text on a white page" or "if design was left up to automotive engineers, they'd be stunned as to why someone would want that good car in blue with a Bose radio instead of focusing on the engine and drive train." But I'm also 100% aware that fabulous design on poorly engineered products fail just as fast if not faster.

The key is balance.

Wikia Free Hosting: The First of Many Things Free?

Wikia just announced free, open serving and "free content for all." If this was just another free site of some kind -- instead of something setup by arguably the quintessential model for open content, Wikipedia -- I'd not be so enthused or intrigued. But Jimmy Wales (head of Wikia) has done it once before on a massive scale and perhaps he'll do it again?

Can't find the article right now and don't have the time (am jammin' before heading to a charity dinner this evening) but I recall the cacophony of voices insisting that Wales monetize the enormous traffic from Wikipedia since the site was receiving something like four billion pageviews per month. If he took advertising, it would dwarf most media properties.

Of course, Wales knew intrinsically that such a move would destroy Wikipedia and take away the very energy and effort all the co-owners of Wikipedia (i.e., all of us) would feel about this global phenomena. He's made it clear in interviews that Wikia was his vehicle to monetize the expertise he and his team have developed with building Wikipedia.

Who but Wales might know how to deliver a scalable, free, ad supported model that relies on the collective input of many? I'm going to invest a fair amount of time in understanding their approach and offer, but the tour looks graphically boring and the categories for an openserver instance too limiting (just tried to open one for a group I'm involved in and none of the categories work!!).

So many A-list bloggers and podcasters have wondered out loud about mobile phones (and even cars) being advertiser supported. I scratch my head over that but who knows? If this model works, could it be the first mass advertising model that allows affinity groups to be self-supporting? Will people really step up and generate content? It's really quite thought provoking. 

Assembling a Rich Internet Application

After my rant yesterday, I'm realizing how incredibly close we are to significantly greater capability to have we run-of-the-mill, non-programmers assemble and deliver our own rich internet applications.

Remember Tom Cruise in Minority Report? Everyone always points to the RFID-like recognition the advertisement had of him as he ran from the cops (the ad greeted him by name). What I recall is when he was researching data in real-time by manipulating it in space with his hands. THAT is what I hope to have next year: a page layout-like ability to place images, text, and chunks of functionality into a seamless whole.

Let's take a look at where we are right now:

• Portal applications like Pageflakes, NetVibes, Protopage and others allow drag-n-drop of RSS-fed news and content as well as nice chunks of functionality like weather, time, search, movie listings and more. These are primarily personal portals...though Pageflakes allows the assemblage of public pages

• Widgets and Gadgets are exploding in number and functionality. Widgetbox and Google Gadgets are the two most prominent, non-desktop (like Yahoo Widgets or Apple's Dashboard Widgets) pieces of functionality that a user could assemble on to a page, blog, or site

• Mashups are exploding in popularity. I haven't checked until this evening (received an email from a friend exploring building a mashup application) and I was stunned with the huge array of them at ProgrammableWeb.

All of this is made possible by the accelerating number of Web-based, hosted applications that have exposed their inner workings with an Application Programming Interface (API).

What's missing from all of this?

Suite of Web Apps for Normal Humans

These people sure look happy with something they're doing online, don't they? Maybe they're using an easy-to-use, configure and run suite of mission-critical Web applications? They can't be because none really exist!

I go back-n-forth being excited by the profound ease-of-use and focused Web 2.0 applications and the nearly 140,000 open source projects out there...and being pissed off that all this stuff is STILL too hard for the average human to install, configure or assemble into a whole solution.

Don't believe me that this is still too hard? Before I explain further, let's pretend that you're NOT one of the hundreds of people I've interacted with over the years at organizations, small to midsize businesses and even individuals who've never installed server-centric applications, don't know what PHP/Ajax or dotnet is, have never heard of Web 2.0/web services/service oriented architectures, and couldn't tell you if the internet is a circuit or packet switching network. NOR DO THEY CARE.

These people know that their publications are downtrending. That their user base is scrambling for more content delivery via the Web. Or that some kind of Web asset needs to be delivered so that they can serve the needs of their constituents, customers or prospects.

Goodbye James

By now, most people have heard about the passing of James Kim. I didn't know him, but felt the punch in the gut like others have when the news broke that they'd found him dead.

Next came the thought about the effort he and his bride put forth to safeguard their daughters and ensure that they survived. Then thinking about what I would've done in a similar situation...there's no question I also would've ventured forth in an attempt to get help.

In a day of GPS, mobile phones, infrared heat tracking devices and other technologies, it's pretty easy for us to minimize the fragility of our systems and the infrastructure we all take for granted. James came across as a man who not only understood technology (I watched him on the Screensavers on TechTV) but I seem to recall that all his digital camera testing was comprised of taking photos of his family.

Being just outside the confines of major urban areas -- and especially in rugged terrain like that in the mountaineous region they were in -- I still would've been aghast that we weren't found earlier and focused on how to solve the problem of being found. After so many days, undoubtedly he knew that time was running out and the only solution was to take action.

As I type this came my last thought: James took care of his bride and babies for many days and they're here because of him.

Plummeting Costs Sparking Innovation

Beginning last year, I noticed a pattern on Podtech's podcasts with and by venture capitalists. The theme was, "...if someone brings us a business plan and it DOESN'T include open source software or outsourcing of certain functions, we won't fund it. Why re-invent the wheel?"

This theme has been discussed at CIOInsight, Computerworld and other publications, but today's Washington Post had an article entitled, "The New Dot Economy. Plummeting Costs Give Rise to a Wave of Internet Entrepreneurs" which expressly discussed this theme.

The tsunami of open source software, cheap hosting, scalable-by-the-drink on-demand offerings like Amazon's, and rapid programming techniques like Ruby on Rails, are providing the ability to quickly put ideas and vision into action and deliverable products.

The good news? Huge innovation. The bad news? Well...how many social bookmarking sites does the world need?

I'm stunned with the entrepreneurs I'm guiding and the projects which involve me directly. It's exciting but I realize that if this is happening here in Minnesota, imagine what's happening in some corner of New Delhi or Beijing?

Pushing Against the Membrane of the Future

Was on the phone today with the CEO of DesignShare talking about "School 2.0" and an upcoming talk he has with architects, educators and administrators as well as the content of the report I published last month on the Rise of the Participation Culture. At one point, I used my now oft-uttered phrase, "pushing against the membrane of the future" while describing how I provide guidance and insight in my consulting activities without providing either a magic bullet or absolute answer to a situation or business problem since, quite frankly, neither exists.

This phrase means to me that we ALL are in the same place on the time continuum and no one knows for certain what the future holds as none of us are there yet! We therefore are all looking back on what's worked in the past, what is occurring right this moment, and then taking our best guess on what is the likely future scenario our idea, a market, or even a competitor might take. I believe there are no experts (just some who have more knowledge at some given moment in time) and that the mass collaboration/connected consciousness/collective intelligence we're experiencing right now with our global internet is massively and rapidly shifting what informs us as well as our ability to push and make the membrane a tad bit more transparent.

This notion of pushing against the membrane of the future is one of my personal guiding principles since I realize some of us can push a little harder than others and make the membrane less opaque and thus the future a little clearer. This is done by seeking out thought leaders. Creating strategies with the best information you can muster. Performing intricate scenario planning that chooses likely influencers on strategy. By sheer dumb luck of stumbling across the perfect answer or by simply thinking far enough ahead of what YOU want to be possible and just inventing the future.

Attitude, intention, creation, aligning incentives and partnering with more experienced and smarter people, implementing systems to "harness" the collective input of others are all elements that come together to understand and thus succeed in pushing just hard enough to make that membrane a tiny bit more transparent and significantly increase your odds of success.

If you haven't guessed it already, the membrane before me is about community, mass collaboration and communications. Pushing against that membrane is manifested for me through blogging, going to relevant events, linking to others using social software and connecting with people I meet virtually, putting forth effort to educate others with my free report and blog posts (I receive A LOT more than I give), and trying to think the big thoughts about how that membrane can be made increasingly transparent over time...and for all of us.

Pageviews as a Metric are Dead in Two Years

Yesterday's post on "Will RSS Whither and Die?" was sparked by Steve Rubel as is this one today from his post entitled, "The Imminent Demise of the Page View." Rubel gives the page view four years to live and says:

"The page view does not offer a suitable way to measure the next generation of web sites. These sites will be built with Ajax, Flash and other interactive technologies that allow the user to conduct affairs all within a single web page - like Gmail or the Google Reader. This eliminates the need to click from one page to another. The widgetization of the web will only accelerate this."

Four years is too generous. I give the page view two years to live. Why just two years? Ironically it's due to what I talked about in my post on Tuesday about Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and the enabling tools and approaches that will leap to the forefront of everyone's consciousness in 2007.

What goes on inside of a Web browser with Ajax, Flash, RIA's and other approaches will enable almost complete data and content access without page refreshes. I understand that explicit personalization (presenting user-centric information based on their login and what their profile contains) is fairly trivial, but sophisticated content delivery AND the subsequent data analytics is NOT what bloggers and most web sites are capable of using.

Hmmm...so maybe the acceleration in ease-of-building-and-delivering Ajax, Flash and RIA's will come with a major increase in the difficulty of measuring who is consuming your content so you can report to advertisers?