Connecting the Dots

Tech and the Desert

Just returned from Scottsdale this morning and water has been on my mind. Two years ago when I wrote Could Water be the Oil of the 21st Century?, I was thinking pretty hard about the possibility that the current growth rates in the desert Southwest weren't sustainable and the wisdom of a potential second home investment in that region.

No one knows, but I'm reading a lot about water and the desert. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) includes a sobering prediction that temperatures in the American West will increase by an average of nine degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century. For more read Denial in the Desert which discusses drought, the draining of the aquifers under the desert, this report and more.

My bride and I looked once again for a second home there but came away without moving forward. Each time we return, the traffic is worse; there are more roads being built; newspapers discuss a far off but looming crisis in water, heat and smog; and the crush of humanity just feels oppressive at times.

Makes me wonder if technology might be the answer.

Getting Things Done (GTD)

I'm in Scottsdale, AZ for a client engagement and also seeing several friends this weekend, but today I'm attending David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) seminar.

All my life, as I've dealt with my scattered attention that some label a "deficit" or "disorder", I've learned how to cope with my innate nature of being distracted and simply not having the patience to sit and organize. Though people describe me as "fastidious" and "very detailed", it's all an illusion. As I've aged and developed high level coping skills while enjoying my love of drinking in every photon, soundwave and piece of information that comes my way or shows up when I'm in seek-mode, I've struggled with how to put stuff into buckets that make later retrieval easy. Name a planner or organizational system created by humans and I've used it...and none have worked for me. The last possibility I'm willing to explore (and if it doesn't work I'll keep shoving crap into my desk drawers) is what seemingly all of geekdom has embraced: the GTD system.

Probably the biggest GTD cheerleader is Merlin Mann through his blog 43 Folders (the name is one descriptor of a part of the GTD system). I've followed him for a long time and he points out all the GTD goodness out there (software, approaches, people using it, along with general productivity stuff) but he comes across as a bit obsessive-compulsive about productivity but I really enjoy his energy and love of all things organizational.

I bought David Allen's book and read it through some months ago. It didn't really connect so I didn't pursue the system and then I was chatting with my friend, Marc Orchant, a devotee' of David Allen and his system. Some time ago he convinced me that "....you really have to experience David in person and go through an on-the-ground seminar to totally get the GTD system." So when he mentioned he was going to a refresher GTD seminar in Scottsdale and the timing was perfect, I signed up.

I also have a hidden agenda. We live in one of the top school districts in the nation and yet our District struggles with what to do with someone like my son. He's in the 99th percentile for IQ and is so unfocused and disorganized that he forgets to turn in completed assignments. Labeled years ago with ADHD, their solution is to place him in a class to learn organizational skills. There's more to it than that and his teachers and staff are truly terrific, but when I try to get them to understand how to deal with him, I feel like I'm talking to physicians in the 1600's who still want to perform bloodletting with leaches to cure what ails him.

If this GTD system can be morphed and modified to be something a 12 year old can use and accelerate his own capabilities with productivity, then I'm going to figure out how to do so. There are too many kids like mine out there who think in a parallel and associative way but are being taught by linear, serial thinkers who expect him to organize in outlines.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Web 2.0 *Doesn't* Suck

Let me start with a disclaimer right up front: I'm a pragmatist but am mostly a happy-assed, optimistic, glass-is-51%-full guy. Instead of looking at why something can't work, doesn't work or what the issues are, I search for how to make the inefficient efficient; the broken, whole; the impossible more possible. That's why I rail against the negative which -- while he's amusingly right in so many ways -- Charlie O'Donnell's post about Why Web 2.0 Sucks looks like his glass is nearly empty and I must admit that I think his position sucks.

Are there issues with Web 2.0 as the world gets re-engineered around the Internetwork? No question...but Charlie, read this chunk of a speech by Teddy Roosevelt which I have framed on my office wall:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

So in that spirit, I'd prefer to focus on all the reasons why Web 2.0 is working and appreciate and admire the "doers of deeds" as Roosevelt refers to them. The items that don't work in Web 2.0 don't "suck" as Charlie refers to them, but rather are blazing an infinite number of trails as the builders of the next generation Web strive valiantly while admittedly quite often committing errors and experiencing shortcomings.

Web 2.0 as a concept is working because the world is transitioning from a closed model to one that is open and transparent. A world where the Internet is the primary connection network for knowledge. There is, and always will be, great resistance from the status quo whose business models, gross margins and livelihood are being disrupted...but the innovation in virtually every category I care about is stunning and I'm personally experiencing the profound transformations being brought about by those daring greatly. Is Web 2.0 'complete'? No...but we're sure learning in a helluva hurry what works and what doesn't....and what needs to be made efficient, whole and more possible.

Perhaps Charlie will appreciate that I found his post on Techmeme, a conversation tracker of the blogosphere and that the irony won't be lost on him that his voice in the wilderness wouldn't even have an audience (other than his pals at the watercooler listening to him rant) had it not been for innovation, participation and the connections facilitated by the Web 2.0 visionaries.

Autonomy+Virage = Dominant *media* search engine?

Autonomy announced Wednesday that they're getting back into the consumer search space...one they quietly exited in 2000. Search is key for certain, but what REALLY trips-my-trigger is a company they acquired some time ago.

When I was at Vignette during and after the dot.com adventure, we were the web content management engine behind numerous marquee sites with rich media.  One of our partners -- on whom I drank the KoolAid about their value proposition by the gallon -- was a company called Virage. These guys had an incredibly cool technology that could index a *huge* amount of video, audio or images and index what lived inside this unstructured media content: facial recognition; the closed captioning track; speech-to-text; real-time analysis and encoding of streaming media (which to me was THE COOLEST thing and something uStream.tv, Podshow or any other media site should drool over); and a whole lot more.

Virage's customer list is a who's who of media companies globally. In the summer of 2003 they were acquired by Autonomy who has also sold licenses of their core search technology to intelligence agencies (seemed like a good fit: the Virage sweet-spot is media...Autonomy's is static content plus context and more and both needed desperately in a post-9/11 world).

Here's some of their marketing speak and why you might be interested:

Vision: THE most important first step...

Nothing happens without a vision. Nothing gets created, manifested, built, or moved forward without a vision of an outcome.

Almost on a daily basis, I'm being bombarded with the benefits of visualization in my work, my personal life and as I guide others. If you don't already visualize before you set personal goals, build a plan or, especially, if you lead an organization, team, or group, then you owe it to yourself to begin.

Just to illustrate how vision is showing up everywhere, at the Web 2.0 Expo's Hybrid Designer session Chris Messina said something that hit me in the face and has stuck with me.  In a discussion about the challenges facing designers with a creative vision struggling to get programmers to see the outcome of that vision so they could code to it, he talked about how he mocked up a visual when they were creating Flock, posted it to Flickr so that the geographically disbursed development team could all get on a call and talk about that vision. Without that shared vision, Chris said, the coordination of the team on a shared vision would've taken 6 weeks and dozens of threads in a discussion forum. Instead, it took 2-3 days.

No question this sharing of vision -- and the co-creating that goes along with that sharing -- is the single reason that I'm so incredibly enthused about the accelerating connection of humanity via the Internet and all the open source projects, Web 2.0 startups, and commercial software companies that are rushing to deliver ever-increasingly functional collaborative applications and platforms.

After dozens of people my bride and I know talked about the film The Secret, she purchased it. It was very well done and focused on one piece of sage wisdom: The Secret is a feature length, historic and factually based account of an age old secret, said to be 4000 years in the making, and known only to a fortunate few. The Secret promises to reveal this great knowledge to the world - the secret to wealth, the secret to health, the secret to love, relationships, happiness, eternal youth, the secret to life. The secret? The Law of Attraction which is creating a vision of what you want and expect to show up...and how it works when you align your intent, your energy and your focus on it.

Why should I care about vision Borsch?

Is Apple in the same game as Adobe and Microsoft?

As Adobe Apollo and Microsoft Silverlight garner significant attention in the emerging rich internet application space, where is Apple?

With arguably the richest set of consumer, prosumer and professional content creation tools in video, audio and a platform the preferred one for creative professionals, why are they not in this game?

With 100 million iPods sold -- and one could assume that easily 50M computers now have Quicktime on them (iTunes download includes Quicktime), then there is a critical mass of players on computers so why are they not playing?

Or are they?

I first began wondering about this last year and was pleased to see Ryan Stewart ask the same question on his ZDNet blog (a month later a wrap up post he did is here about the entire category). He did a great job on the initial post and then received several comments that clarified his position. He's long since updated the original post which I've linked to and it will give you some of the reasons why some people don't think a cross platform runtime with Quicktime is achievable.

The Quicktime "container" can do numerous interesting media playback like support most major image formats; most video formats; streaming protocols; 3GPP and 3GPP2 for cellular telephony; H.264 (the big deal video codec); and AAC for audio.

Apple says here: When you distribute your media in QuickTime, you automatically gain access to a massive platform. Available for both Windows and Mac, QuickTime 6 was downloaded more than 350 million times. Moreover 98% of those downloads were from PC users, at a rate of over 10 million per month. QuickTime offers a mature platform with thousands of professional and consumer authoring applications.

So where is Apple and why aren't they positioning this container as one that delivers some (much?) of what Apollo and Silverlight can do...and then some?

People Oriented Architecture

Henry Ford invented what? The automobile? Nope. Oh yeah, the assembly line? Nope. What Ford *did* do was something more profound: he and his team discovered radical processes that could be brought to automobile production and dramatically lower costs, increase efficiency and raise quality. He didn't invent the assembly line, he just mapped it on to automobile making in startlingly new ways and mass production was born.

Before Ford's breakthrough, all automobiles were assembled in one spot, with all parts and people coming to it vs. the radical departure of having the auto move along an assembly line where parts and people were efficiently placed and able to assemble it dynamically.

This assembly line paradigm wasn't new. Eli Whitney's cotton gin manufacturing employed these principles as did the meat processing industry. One of Ford's key managers visited a Chicago meat processing plant where he saw the dis-assembly of cows moving along a conveyor belt and had an "Aha!" moment where he realized that a reversed process could assemble goods.

All of this was brought back to Ford who'd been seeking better ways of producing cars and had a vision for consumerism. His next breakthrough of raising wages to $5 enabled his own production workers to actually afford the cars they were making.

In the enterprise world, today's information technology architecture is all about running the business more efficiently and competitively. Cycle time reduction, business process and workflow, enterprise resource planning, analytics, are but a few of the buzz phrases that define the categories targeted.

Where do people fit in today's IT architecture's other than acting as production workers on a knowledge assembly line?  What is the breakthrough analog to today's business and I.T. architectures that will rival Ford's profound application of mass production?

Web 2.0 and Internet-as-a-Platform: It's still WAY too hard

Joe had built a publishing and consulting business over many, many years but it was changing...and not for the better. Though his clients and customers loved his products and services, he found that sales had been continuing to erode even though he was bringing out new products at a feverish pace.

New products always sold well but it was exhausting to scramble to make them and he had a vague sense that the problem wasn't his information, his insights or his delivery...it was a shift in how his clients and customers were obtaining what he created and at some point it wouldn't matter how many new products he shoved into the pipeline...people would stop buying. They were already pretty disinterested in his print, DVD's or most of the electronic delivery he offered. There had to be a better way to deliver what clients and customers wanted and start to grow again instead of focusing on how to stop the decline in revenue.

All Joe heard about was Web 2.0; how big media was scrambling to be relevant; that people were creating their own content and many tried to convince him to give away his product and build buzz (yeah right...and go out of business to boot!); that the collective intelligence connected via the Internet was smarter than any company, individual or small team so that unless he figured out how to build a community around what his firm offered, he was screwed.

It became crystal clear to him that -- just like all the other business types being disrupted by the Internet-as-a-platform and Web 2.0 -- he had to quickly map his business on to the Internet while ensuring he didn't kill his current revenue streams. It was going to require some finesse to shift his current clients and customers over to the Web while still selling them his other offerings...but he thought they would do it. Yep...building a web asset was the key and he set about enthusiastically building one in earnest.

What he discovered wasn't pretty.

Barcamp: MinneBar

Though I had another commitment so left a bit early, I attended 60% of today's Barcamp:Minnebar. Our fearless facilitators are shown at left: Ben Edwards, Dan Grigsby and Luke Francl locally here in Minnesota. This unconference drew >350 signups and I don't know how many people ended up attending...but it was more than I've ever seen at a Minnesota geekfest.

Thankfully there were great sponsors including Dow Jones Online, SplitRock Partners, Electric Pulp, IconNicholson and New Counsel, with reasonably speedy Wifi provided by ipHouse. It made this a seamless event with all needs met and, with our fearless facilitators Luke, Dan and Ben scrambling to ensure it ran smoothly, I was stunned it flowed as well as it did.

The event kicked off with William Gurstelle who I originally saw on TechTV's The Screen Savers with his backyard potato gun project.  Here he is showing it off:

Read on to see a brief snippet video of the opening introduction by our fearless facilitators and a few more pictures...

Google Web History: Moths to a flame

Continuing on my theme of yesterday about Google and them being the flame to which moths like us are flying straight in to -- with little knowledge or regard for that fact that we could get burned whether or not Google continues to "do no evil" going forward -- I give you Google Web History.

UPDATE: CNET has news on a complaint on Google filed at the Federal Trade Commission with links to some articles and sites that are really enlightening. Copy of the complaint is here (PDF) and contains this point, "The acquisition of DoubleClick will permit Google to track both a person’s Internet searches and a person’s web site visits. This could impact the privacy interests of 233 million Internet users in North America, 314 million Internet users in Europe, and more than 1.1 billion Internet users around the world."

One reason I turned off Google Search History a few days after turning it on (the predecessor to Web History) was that I had a keen sense that allowing Google to have an audit trail of my seeking and viewing behavior was a really bad idea -- especially in a day of subpoena happy law enforcement -- even though I'm the prototypical model citizen. Let's look at six applications and see why I sometimes ask myself whether I'm being paranoid, an alarmist or just watchful:

1) Gmail allows Google to match IP address to user. As long as I'm logged in and use the same browser, they're aware of other Google services I use and could (not saying they do) collate all Google services traffic emanating from that IP address/machine (Gmail's state is pretty persistent and perhaps you notice that their requirement to re-login are few and the session length is pretty liberal...they almost never kick me off)

2) Google Search gives them a Database of Intention (to use a term coined by John Batelle in The Search) that -- since I'm logged into Gmail -- is a capture of every single search ever performed. Google can undoubtedly capture my search use regardless if I've got Google Search History turned on or not

3) Google Analytics is so robust and free that I've placed their tracking code all over the web sites and web assets I own or am involved in as has virtually everyone else I know. So Google doesn't just have the ability to spider sites, they also now have a view into process (someone's clickstream through a site)

Google Adds Collaborative Web Conferencing?

As the days go by it seems like Google is delivering extremely scalable, easy to use (yet butt-ugly) services designed to attract as many humans as possible to use them. The more we connect through Google services, the more tracking and analytics they'll have in their Database of Intention (to use a term coined by John Batelle in The Search).

Appears that Google's acquisition of Marratech   (UPDATE: they only acquired the Marratech web conferencing software) is an internal use acquisition (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) but I agree with Pete Cashmore that it's most likely designed to add to the productivity suite they're building with the alleged Microsoft Office killer (i.e., Google Docs & Spreadsheets; Google Presentations) and their likely Sharepoint killer (i.e., Jotspot). Add to that what I'm viewing as "table stakes" to be in the collaboration game -- screen sharing and conferencing with voice, video, etc. -- and you have one helluva hub that will attract we moths to the Google flame.

Add to that the build-out of what Eric Schmidt dubbed "the Google supercomputer" at the Web 2.0 Expo and you can see what they're building and their strategy becomes clear: they're not just collecting and delivering means to place the world's information at our fingertips, they're also giving us the tools to mix and mash it around together as a collective...

...and insert ads at every appropriate junction, custom tailored to each of us since they'll be able to track an amazing wealth of data. Perhaps it's time for the 'sphere to pressure Google to open up and let us at least have some level of understanding of what data they're compiling on us.

CTD on MySpace News beta

About 20 minutes ago started an explosion of incoming referral addresses from news.myspace.com hitting my post on ScobleCam at the Web 2.0 Expo. It appears that they've inserted my blog into one they're following in the "Technology>InternetTech" category and this one is moving up in the voting.

While it delights me my blog is getting hit and I'm sure to see a corresponding spike in ongoing readership, I'm puzzled about something and maybe someone out there has already done the analysis.

What puzzles me is blog ranking and the algorithms that drive TechMeme, Tailrank, Topix, Megite and now MySpace News...and why mine is often called out on Megite and Tailrank as a key post but only as a follow-on post (as one of many in the conversation under some higher ranking blogger) in TechMeme.

My interest isn't in how to artificially alter or accelerate my rank and thus my readership...it's growing just fine on its own. My goal isn't ranking but rather being a material and important voice in the blogosphere surrounding all the issues we're all driving forward on. Perhaps the two aren't mutually exclusive but are mutually reinforcing and I probably should be chasing rank and readership? But how do these sites each determine how to rank, whom to rank, and what's important? Where is the full disclosure so we readers can ensure that someone paying for rank isn't artificially high up?

In any event, it seems like many sites emerging -- like Megite, Tailrank and now MySpace News -- are driving deeper into the blogosphere to uncover content worthy of adding to their categories. I had a sense that if I just kept driving forward on my mission and purpose -- Guidance, Insight and Ideas in a Time of Accelerating Change -- that people who might be interested would eventually find me.

I've had the huge, gignormous spikes in readership after doing Apple fanboy-like posts or some other ones with more mass appeal. Experiencing this has given me a feel for how I could game the system -- if I was so inclined -- to get readers, but I had a model that you might find a bizarre reference for a blogging, midlife white guy with a propeller on his beanie: Oprah Winfrey.

When Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones and other near-porn-like (or National Enquirer-like) shows were garnering eyeballs like crazy, she had a choice: join 'em or take the high road and focus on the really important stuff. She did, kept going, people seeking authenticity and meaning found her, the others downtrended dramatically and the good stuff remained.

Being found by people authentically seeking is reward enough and moves my own agenda forward as well as makes my contributions seem worthwhile. Though I'll remain curious about rankings and how these blogosphere trackers bring posts forward for mass market consumption, I'm determined to continue on my path adding value to the conversation wherever I can and thus learning more in these conversations than I could ever hope to contribute.

So if you have any knowledge about rankings or pointers to it, let me know. Also be heartened that there is A LOT of good stuff out there and it's growing.

Chris & Chris streaming live via uStream at Web 2.0 Expo

UPDATE: I love Brightcove, but I've replaced the video I had below. Why? I was absolutely delighted with a new video sharing site, Viddler, that I came across in the Long Tail pavilion at Web 2.0 Expo. In some ways you can think of Viddler as the "Flickr of video" since they've provided A LOT of tools to add value to a video instead of just playing it. You need to check them out.

In the last 30 minutes of Web 2.0 Expo before heading off to the airport, I was watching Chris Pirillo and Chris Yeh (investor, founder and interim CEO of uStream) doing a live show via uStream with ~100 people in the chat room egging them on.

As I left I thought, "What the hell. I'm going to grab some video of them doing the show" and before I knew it I was in the show.

Live, streaming video from Justin.tv, Scoble and these guys is really rough around the edges...but the live aspect is incredibly profound especially when there's an audience interacting live with those delivering the show!

Do you watch any of Chris Pirillo's stuff? This guy has so damn much energy and is involved in so much it's amazing.

ScobleCam on the Loose at Web 2.0 Expo

After today's keynote sessions, I walked by Robert Scoble who had his Ustream.tv gear doing interviews outside in the lobby on 3rd floor.

I approached him with my card since we've gone back-n-forth a few times by email and in blog post conversations and we chatted. He was polite but clearly and urgently interested in cutting short a conversation with me since he was scanning the crowd for more important folks to talk with on camera.

First off, for a place where wireless connectivity is a joke (which is ironic in-and-of-itself at an Internet conference where more of our data is in the cloud), the quality is surprisingly good. Check out his live stream here.

Unfortunately (and as you can see in this interview shot at the right which I grabbed just now) his "headcam" was focused on the wall instead of his subject during this current interview and he was moving around like a cat in heat. Makes for tough viewing (and sparks nausea) but this type of live streaming is extremely early and there are lots of hiccups to work through. If Scoble had just ONE person near him monitoring his feed, acting as some sort of gatekeeper for people wanting to get "on cam" and helping him to adjust (and to somehow be prompted with comments coming in live from viewers) this would be even more awesome.

Pretty fun though and it will be interesting to see if conference organizers -- or anyone wanting to protect the exclusivity of an event or the intellectual capital delivered -- will disallow live stuff like Scoble is doing.

Web 2.0 Expo: The Conspicuously Absent

While continuing to be impressed with the energy and enthusiasm at this event, the well trafficked and enjoyable trade show area (especially the fun Long Tail area) and the people I'm interacting with, I'm also struck by the conspicuous absence of two vendors who should be here in full force.

You'll understand why Apple and Microsoft are conspicuously absent in a moment when you consider the true magnitude of the flux in the Web 2.0 and the chasm between it and what's being dubbed "Enterprise 2.0". Add to that the immaturity of tools and approaches and you'll see that all things 2.0 is a *very* early shift from desktop/server platforms to the Internet-as-a-platform and we've got a long way to go before this is mainstream.

Apple and Microsoft are arguably the front-ends connecting people to the Internet/Web and are also the hubs for user generated video, audio, image, textual and visualization content. Microsoft especially has both the front end, much of the current enabling toolsets (e.g., Expression tools) and back end server solutions -- though almost all the Web 2.0 development is using open source tools and approaches. Even with Mix '07 coming up as Microsoft's showcase event (which they control in total and where they'll surely make a huge splash with Silverlight), if they were confident in their approach and tools and were ready to pitch them to the developer ecosystem they'd be here. I would expect that they'll position, spin and demonstrate how all their tools will take Web application development far beyond the one-off Ajax development, Ruby on Rails or other Web 2.0 paradigms at Mix which most developers I know would argue with vehemently.

Apple has essentially walked away from their Java-based WebObjects platform and Jobs has stated publicly that the enterprise isn't their target but rather the millions of consumers in the world. I remember the excitement and evangelism that developers had for the WebObjects approach when first delivered by NeXT, Steve Jobs' company he started after getting the boot from Apple. No one can argue with Jobs' turnaround of Apple which -- when started in 1996 and at the early days of the Web -- surely didn't include much emphasis on the corporate space or a toolset like WebObjects and the wisdom of this is clear to anyone who has heard of an iPod.

So where will Apple play? The front end only? Maybe a front end to Google's back end "supercomputer" (as Eric Schmidt called Google in yesterday's interview with John Batelle) with tools that let everyman assemble web services into an application (read my Prediction: Apple Will Own Mass Market Web Applications)? Or don't they care yet since it's too early?

Will Microsoft beat Adobe to the "rich, internet application" container space by making Silverlight the preferred target for Web/desktop hybrid applications over Apollo?  Will Microsoft's toolsets be a multiplier and accelerator for building Web applications and be SO GOOD that other, open source approaches whither and die? How will Adobe react to the Microsoft Expression suite of tools that tie the designers or "brushstroke" creators to the backend "keystroke" programmers?

Unfortunately Apple wants a controlled event of their own for releasing *anything* and Microsoft is moving down that same path with Mix. It's too bad since anyone in this emerging space would be better off if all the key vendors were participating in a single venue that early adopters could attend to get a comprehensive perspective.

Google Presentations: Exclusive Screenshot!

At the left you can see the exclusive screenshot of Google Presentations which CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt announced at Web 2.0 Expo today and about which virtually everyone else has already blogged (I was being social and having fun and just got back to my hotel).

In keeping with Google's minimalistic approach to design that is "clean" and "ensures fast loading",  Google has opted to go with a white-on-white theme with no controls or other elements to slow presentation parsing via the Internets.

(That blank-n-fake screenshot is just hilarious Borsch and you've just proved the point as to why there are no technoweenie, propellerhead or geek comedians).

All kidding aside, it saddens me that Google focuses almost solely on keystrokes vs. brushstrokes (a focus on the technical function of the software over form and the user interface). I use several of Google's services (Gmail, Analytics, Calendar, Doc's & Spreadsheets, AdSense) but am consistently stunned by how well the software works, is usually blazingly fast and obviously scales...but how Google designs like a blind architect born without arms.

Like most software engineers I know and have worked with in past lives, these engineers are justified in the knowledge that great software wouldn't exist without their expertise and engineering acumen. A user interface that's beautiful and engaging? It's usually an afterthought and the last thing seriously considered or where energy is focused.  In addition, the brushstroke folks who DO build what all customers see and use get short shrift from the engineers as their effete and girly skills are seen to add little value compared to the awesomeness and God-like qualities of a talented software engineer. 

No question that simplicity and fast rendering is key in an Internet age and Google has stated publicly many times that speed is their #1 goal.  But gradients, color and most pattern doesn't take anymore time to load than black and white or that God-awful pale blue they use everywhere. Perhaps the absolute necessity and intrinsic value of design will rub off on Dr. Eric Schmidt as he's exposed to Apple as a board member since no one does it better than Apple.

Tens of millions of Mac OS X users would agree -- most of whom don't even realize that the elegant, beautiful and engaging user interface they're using sits on top of an operating system (BSD unix) formerly the exclusive playground of geeks.

Web 2.0 Expo: Diamonds in the Rough

Today was a busy day with a few good sessions and personal, lengthy meetings (with nothing I can disclose at this time) and I wanted to jot down some thoughts before heading to an event this evening.

The image at the bottom left is a crowd shot of the exhibit hall this evening. It was SO PACKED you could hardly move, let alone talk to anyone at booths. What a home run for CMP Media, O'Reilly, the exhibitors and attendees. The human connections made at venues like this is where good stuff happens and I was amused that CMP had to announce the show closing not once...not twice...but three times and people kept on talking with one another. You could tell people were hungry for more time on the exhibit floor.

My exposure tonight was cursory and I'm planning more in-depth booth discussions tomorrow. But I was impressed with four vendors:

1) Curl: Web services (e.g., widgets, gadgets) are the lifeblood of composite applications. Their value proposition in a nutshell is, "With Curl, developers can implement a new class of enterprise-grade, complex Web-based applications that cannot easily be developed with other RIA technologies. Additionally, corporations with legacy client-server applications can move to Web-based delivery, increasing reach and reducing cost." They've got a huge opportunity with both new delivery and, most importantly, to repurpose existing datasets and application functionality. This re-launch in North America is going to be really interesting to watch.

2) Viddler: Happened to by the Long Tail pavilion and stopped by a laptop showing a video. My instant thought was, "Oh....yet another video site" until a guy asked me if I was interested to learn about Viddler. He proceeded to show me several of their competitive differentiators and here's ONE to whet your appetite: at any point in a video, you can add a tag and select an embed code.  The kicker? While YouTube and others allow you to embed an entire video on your site, Viddler allows you then to embed the video but it starts from that point in the video!

You can also set multiple points and, for example, be able to have navigation links on the page where the video is displayed for people to immediately go those various points in the video. I'm NOT doing this justice...but this is very cool and if I was delivering video content other than Mentos shooting Diet Coke high in the air...I'd use these guys.

3) Egnyte: is a collaboration and sharing application that I happened to be standing by talking to someone else. While I stood watching them, I was stunned by how they actually do what they describe, "Egnyte delivers a web based application that uniquely combines sharing, automatic organization and a powerful search capability. Use Egnyte to store and organize your documents, emails, IM and to share this with others."

4) Yugma: These guys were my client in 2006 and I am so pleased that they're here *and* that they're getting so much traffic. They did something pretty fun in that they have a schedule up in their booth calling it Stage 2 (as in another stage besides their booth stage) and others who didn't come to the Expo are delivering content, via Yugma, during the event! Clever and a great showcase for their technology.

Web 2.0 Expo Sunday workshops...

Plenty of other blogger recaps out there (just search Technorati for Web 2.0 Expo) but I just had a few personal observations of my own that I'd like to add to the perspective and the conversation surrounding this event which is just getting started:

1) There are A LOT of people here. I'm stunned with how well attended it is and CMP/O'Reilly's execution which is absolutely first-class. Moscone West is a great hall for this venue, the Expo signage is huge and clear, the people are nice and they're bending over backwards to make sure it runs smoothly. A few hiccups on registration and audio in one session, but minor stuff.

2) I'm learning. In one session I attended (while I flitted around to try to catch the gist of several of them) which was Stowe Boyd's workshop on "Building Social Applications" (presentation here) there were several *hundred* people in the audience. Not that I'm some sort of know-it-all, but I usually don't get a whole lot out of conference sessions -- nor do I have the patience for sitting for hours waiting for a jewel or two to appear -- but I came away with at least 10 ideas from Stowe's session. A record for me.

I've been in casual conversations with Stowe before and I'm interested in another since I beg to differ with him on one point in his workshop. Maybe this is nitpicking, but when he was comparing the push for personal productivity (like all the buzz about David Allen's Getting things Done system) vs. the multiple streams of communication many are now involved in (IM, SMS, Twitter) he was characterizing this as a good thing and said, "Personal productivity is less important than network productivity". I agree...to a point.

When I have Skype, iChat (for a few folks I videoIM with), Adium and Twitter all running -- as well as Techmeme, Tailrank and other trackers open -- I'm simply interrupt-driven. If I didn't have stuff to focus on and also being ADD the interruptions make it tough to get back on track...I'd think this was cool. But when do people have time to contemplate? To think? To consider? To visualize possiblities? I submit that turning it off or minimizing the river of information and interruptions is necessary and creating guardrails around brain-time is critical.

3) The people that are here. I've already met a half dozen people whose blogs I read faithfully (and two who read mine!) and the hallway conversations are, as always, one of the best parts.

Many in the tech cognoscenti seem to think the Web 2.0 meme has run out of gas and we should be on to the next one be it Web 3.0 or some other moniker. I submit that the tip of the iceberg is just poking out of the water and there's alot to learn, to see and to build. This Expo is taking the message to the next level of leaders and doers and I'm eager for the next few days to unfold.

You are not funny and are deflating the blogosphere's value

UPDATE: Jon Gordon from Minnesota Public Radio's American Public Media's FutureTense has audio interviews with both Ed Kohler and Robert Scoble.

UPDATE2: On April 16th, Jon Gordon delivers a FutureTense with snippets from the interviews above as well as one with me done a couple of days prior.

As a fellow Minnesota blogger and technoweenie, the Technology Evangelist guys are in my news aggregator. Reading Ed Kohler's post this morning, "Technology Evangelist Podcast to Replace Imus" I thought, "Nah" but then thought "Hmmm....maybe CBS is that desperate to get user generated content creators into the fold" but still didn't buy it. Turns out, of course, it wasn't true.

Here's the deal: To all bloggers attempting to be taken seriously...stop trying to be funny....'cause you're not! The whole April Fool's joke thing isn't working anymore since 99% of them aren't funny anyway. The other issue? If you're going to do an April Fool's joke, do it on April Fool's day and NOT the day before or after....or any other day for that matter.

The key to humor is timing. Respected people like Mike Arrington and Robert Scoble broke the unspoken timing rule this year by delivering their incredibly side-splittingly funny attempted humor early and it backfired (not hugely...but my trust in them has gone down a notch). They weren't the only ones (just the most visible that I read) and it bugged me so I wrote "Why there are no technoweenie, geek or propellerhead comedians". It's not that I don't have a sense of humor but I use it elsewhere instead of on my blog where I'm trying to have the value I'm delivering taken seriously.

Kohler has posted his act of contrition. But how will I know what to believe in the future when I read him? Do I wait to see if he was just kidding or maybe just stop reading him?

Connected World = Creativity & Innovation

As I've studied the shifts occurring due to our increasingly connected world, I'm primarily focused on disruption, removal of inefficiencies and, most importantly, on new ways to create and innovate.

Of the 90 or so thought leaders whom I read daily in my news aggregator, one such group of thinkers is at Futuretext led by founder, Ajit Joakar. On April 5th, they'd pointed to a McKinsey and Co. brief report online entitled, "How Businesses are Using Web 2.0. A Global Survey" and I flagged the article...which I just got to reading this morning. I'd heartily recommend you register and read it (free reg) or subscribe to the entire McKinsey Quarterly site ($150 per year).

But in my typical parallel thinking and associative neural pathway adventures (i.e., Attention Deficit (ADD)), I saw a link to, "Creation nets: Getting the most from open innovation". Reading it I had an "Aha!...I've read this before" moment and it led me to this post from May of last year by John Hagel on Edge Perspectives...one of the thought leaders I follow.

In that post is a link to a working paper (PDF) entitled "Creation Nets". Penned by John Hagel and John Seely Brown, it will give you a solid understanding of the same themes running through Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and one of my favorites A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. Though the term "creation nets" hasn't really become the meme that people point to, I love it. Why? Because creativity most often comes from careful analysis coupled with flashes of brilliance, the taking of risks, or having something completely unexpected or accidental inform or guide the outcome.

From the post by Hagel:  There’s a lot of talk about product innovation and there is some attention to process innovation and business model innovation.  But most executives do not fully understand the institutional innovation that explains the emergence and growth of creation nets.  We hope that our article will make a contribution to building that understanding. As usual, we have developed a more detailed working paper (PDF) that amplifies the themes introduced in the article.

What are the implications of this for you and why should you care?

When will Internet Explorer 6 die?

Oh how I wish Internet Explorer 6 would die. Maybe Microsoft putting a gun to the head of WindowsXP and pulling the trigger will do it. According to Net Applications Market Share stats for the quarter ended March, 2007, IE 6 still commands a 48% browser share.

Why do I long for its demise? Let's take this blog for instance. I've horsed around with the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to get the blog container to have the white space in the body and the overall look-n-feel I want. I also extended the width of it past the 900 pixels typically found in Typepad's CSS to 1,000 pixels. The header image you see above fits within that 1,000 pixel space perfectly and looks great on Firefox, Safari, Mozilla, Opera...but if you're viewing this blog on IE6 you'll see that there is a single pixel line of white space on the right side of the header graphic that sticks out like a sore thumb. There's probably a workaround, but it's an ancient (in Internet terms) IE6 problem that I'm unwilling to expend much effort to correct.

When I created Rise of the Participation Culture as a Web and PDF-based report, our Web tools generated PNG images that, unfortunately, IE6 can't render!  We had to export each image separately as a JPG as well as request that my template producer create a JPG version of the template itself. What a pain in the butt.

Most people can turn on their computer and do a few things but downloading Firefox or even IE7 apparently isn't in their skill sets (those links, by the way, take you right to the download sites for those browsers in case you're reading this in IE6 and want to join the 52% of the computing world that's up-to-date). This newbie nature is one reason that -- even though propellerheads like me can get all goosey and enthusiastic about the latest-n-greatest technology -- the average person could either care less or needs a lot of handholding to get and stay current.

Of course, this mass, functional technical illiteracy is one reason why our friends at Best Buy bought the Geek Squad and why it's unlikely there will be significant push to sell the Macintosh's they allegedly are rolling out to 200 stores. To do so would cut off the easy money the Geek Squad gets from a complex Windows operating system that newbies struggle with daily (and people that support their family would have with experiences like I did with my Dad).

Phew! That sounds like a huge rant and comes across really negative and dismissive of those in need of the kind of help I provide. It's not intended to be such and I didn't even get into all the security problems that still exist with IE6. I understand how hard this stuff is for people just wanting to do their job -- instead of fool with the tool -- and I empathize.

When I walk into companies or my local school district I realize that there are good reasons why upgrading -- which costs money in hardware, software or the time to perform the upgrading -- isn't done routinely or what some of us think is even a modestly fast timetable. But upgrading a browser is such a drop-dead-simple thing to do (and it's FREE) that pointing out to people why they should do so seems straightforward.

Web 2.0 Expo: A Showcase for Innovation

Heading to San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo this weekend and am eagerly anticipating it. The sessions are top notch; there will be launches, announcements and many vendors; and I have several meetings I'm pleased to be in.

As is typical for me, there are numerous concurrent sessions I'd like to be in at every time slot during the day! I know it's impossible to experience it all -- and I rely on other bloggers like ReadWriteWeb to tell me the highlights of conferences that I AM ACTUALLY AT! -- so hopefully I won't miss much and the hallway conversations are routinely 10x more meaningful...so I'm looking forward to those almost as much.

Knowing what I do about the Expo at this stage (from talks with the CMP Media folks), there's no question that this Expo needs to be regionalized for other States in the US and other countries. As I've stated many times before, just look at the incredible value of the hundreds of Web 2.0 companies you can get to from lists like the ones here. How many of them have you heard of? How is a business leader, functional department head or project team even have solutions like these on their radar screens?

Over and over again I've worked with clients, friends and family to whom I've recommended one or more solutions from these lists. Over the last five quarters, I've gone through ALL these lists and looked at ALL the value propositions of these companies. This exercise has given me a solid feel for how well their value propositions are presented on their site (and sadly not very well in many cases) while allowing me to also take more "test drives" than I care to count.

What that constant trolling and analyzing has done for me is this: I can match solutions to needs or instantly provide people with a starting point for their own due diligence or exploration. The biggest consequence of these efforts is that I'm more excited and enthusiastic about the Internet-as-a-platform and Web 2.0 (or NextGenWeb, FutureWeb or whatever you care to call it) than almost anyone else I know. This excitement, the possibilities, the opportunities need to be more widely disseminated since the wide majority of people are clueless about what's going on with the emergent Internet/Web platform...let alone the almost laughingly huge number of solutions that are already built and just waiting for them to use.

If you'd like to be able to take a peek at the booths in the Expo pavilion and see for yourself, I've been provided with a code to get a $100 discount you can use when you register *in advance on the Web*:  webex07mk38

This is good for $100 off any conference pass (if you want to pay the big bucks and see the sessions) or the Expo pass (which costs $100, so using the code makes attending the exhibit area free).

Minnesota High Tech Association (MHTA) Spring Conference

I'm sitting on a panel right now with Graeme Thickins (Tech~Surf~Blog), Rich Scorza (The Keel Group) and Aaron Fulkerson (MindTouch) at the MHTA Spring Conference and thought I'd post from a presenter's point of view. This post was made using my Palm Treo 700p and Typepad's mobile software that lets me blog from wherever I have a cell connection.

Governor Tim Pawlenty spoke this morning and my panel is focused on Next Generation Web. Engaged audience and it really pleases me that so many in Minnesota care about our state and high technology.

Gotta go...my colleague is finishing up and we're heading into Q&A time...

Internet ID: Are we getting close to one?

I am getting very encouraged that the big kids (IBM, Microsoft, et al) are closing in on an Internet-centric identification scheme that will be really useful for ALL of us who use the Web. I wrote about extensively here so won't repeat myself, other than the major points.

This article is a must-read if you have even a passing interest in authenticity, trust, and some of the amazingly cool possibilities which might emerge once we have an Internet ID system in place. It discussed IBM's release of code with a technology they've dubbed an identity mixer which "...will will let users pick and choose what information to disclose about themselves and next (in July) an identity selector for choosing the sources of information to use."

Why should you care? The promise of all this work are practical uses like single sign-on to Web applications; verification of who you are for transactions; autopopulating of data in Web applications; and so forth. But to me, the EXCITING use will be allowing us to proxy ourselves and the data within our profile/identity to those we choose to interact with online.

Huh? What do you mean by exciting Borsch?

Let me explain further about what benefit letting out a proxy of ourselves might do. Imagine you're interested in buying a new HDTV. You shop and shop and shop online attempting to educate yourself about what's available before you plunk down your dough. Once you've decided on a make and model, the fun of finding the best deal begins. But what if instead you could put your request for a quote online and advertisers, marketers and sellers of HDTV's could come to you? Since they'd be able to verify that yes, you have the money (since your ID would contain your credit score, income verification and so on BUT would be opaque and private so they couldn't attach it to a real human...yet), they would feel comfortable coming after you and your business.

What if your ID also contained your online reputation? Now a maker of HDTV's could say, "Hmmm....Schmedlap is an influencer, a blogger and a user of social networks and a geek. If we get him to buy our HDTV -- and get him to blog about it and tell 10 friends -- we'll give him a better price." Several companies come after your proxy with proposals that toss in stuff (e.g., cables, screen protectors, stands, etc.) and other things that steer you toward their offerings.

Tim O'Reilly wrote about a Blogger Code of Conduct with some controls built-in to handle the trolls and anonymous people on blogs so that the blogosphere doesn't devolve into chaos. I submit that -- once an ID system was in place with the ability to anonymize ourselves or create proxy/pseudonyms THAT COULD BE VERIFIED against a real, secure identification system -- there'd be need for a code of conduct but people would be less willing to do things publicly since it would be trivial to have their comments traceable back to an actual human. (Note: For every system like this in place, I'm well aware that gaming the system or hacking it is often trivial...and I'm not qualified to assess the security of IBM or anyone else's approach).

The increasingly connected world needs something like this that works with, of course, all the requisite watchdogging for privacy...but I'm mainly interested in the exciting stuff.

Enterprise 2.0: Will Cisco/WebEx Win?

After putting together this post, Why in the world would Cisco buy WebEx?, I've been continuing to track publicly delivered information -- and thinking-through that info -- that confirms my premise Cisco bought them as a platform play in the unified communications space.

If you're in the Web 2.0 space focused on delivering great value with hosted Web applications, then you're into being nimble, fast and focused which is why Web 2.0 as an umbrella term is so damn exciting. Unfortunately enterprise I.T. has never been known by any of those adjectives and "exciting" is a term not often used with big, costly, organization-wide software implementations.

In the Web 2.0 space many developers find themselves leveraging API's from companies delivering their functionality as a Web service so it can be consumed inside applications and thinking about Web application hybrids or "mashups" (peek at ProgrammableWeb to see hundreds of these mashups).  In the dozens of conversations I'm in every month with Web 2.0 companies, rarely do the concepts service oriented architecture, web services, software as a service (SaaS) or composite applications ever come up. But these latter ones have been around a long time in the enterprise, monolithic application, portal, mainframe space and enterprise-class independent software vendors (ISV's) and I.T. leadership are keenly tracking all the innovation in the Web 2.0 arena. Their interest lies in continuing their quest to find better and more efficient ways to leverage information technology and deliver ever higher value. You'll be hearing a lot about Enterprise 2.0 going forward as ISV's and CIO's embrace the Web 2.0 concepts that have been proven to work as they seek that ever greater value.

As the world increasingly connects and knowledge work is scattered around the globe in loosely coupled groups of organizations and people, enabling effective collaboration is mission-critical for most companies. Not only for work to get done or innovation to occur, but to manage the increasingly important imperatives of energy conservation (i.e., less travel), risk mitigation for the potential negative impact from terrorism, natural disasters or viral pandemics, and to cater to the changing expectations of their participative work force. 

WebEx Connect is WebEx' attempt to move beyond simple screen sharing. As business process is increasingly driven down into the middleware and infrastructure layers -- with high level tools for business people to lay out a process and assemble information technology to drive it -- having a scalable and extensible platform that ISV's, enterprise I.T. or Web 2.0-centric developers can simply leverage and use on a global basis makes a ton of sense.

(UPDATE: Graeme Thickins of Tech~Surf~Blog just alerted me to this article about John Chambers, Cisco CEO, encouraging channel partners to embrace Web 2.0).

Is WebEx Connect that platform?  Most importantly, will Cisco/WebEx win the battle for the hearts-n-minds of ISV's and the enterprise to make it THE unified communications platform?

Microsoft Surprises: Controlling the Process

At the Web 2.0 Conference in 2005, a relatively new to Microsoft Ray Ozzie was fully engaged (spoke twice) and I had the pleasure to be seated in the back of the room near him and we bantered back-n-forth (as I mentioned in this post) a few times.

This past Web 2.0 Summit in November of 2006 saw, in my opinion, a significantly different Ray Ozzie. Rather than being the seemingly humble, I'm-one-of-you stance and conversational tone, he was positioning, spinning and coming across as though he'd been fully assimilated in the Microsoft way.

That said, it's tough to walk in his shoes. I don't know the man nor have I spent quality time in conversation with him. I'm not playing the game at his level nor am I someone who has to try to be THE guy that carries the essence and spirit of Bill Gates forward. Imagine doing that OR being the guy that takes over when Steve Jobs retires. Big shoes to fill.

This interview gives a glimpse into the gargantuan responsibility that he faces. The questions are: Will Ozzie change Microsoft...or will Microsoft change him? Since Ozzie didn't even show up for Etech and seems to be in stealth mode, is he crafting some surprises?

I have little inside information though a good friend of mine is heading up one of their new, emerging categories. He is beyond busy so we have only cursory conversations and connections so everything in this post are my own observations and musings.

Here's what I'm beginning to realize: Ozzie will be driving a series of Microsoft surprises that leverage Internet-as-a-platform AND PROCESSES in new and fundamental ways. Here are some of the signs I'm seeing to bring me to that realization:

A 12 year old's Role Playing Game creation

For anyone not observant or paying attention to the fundamental changes occurring with kids, games, media and their attention, I'd like to offer up one illustration: my 12 year old son and what he's doing right this minute building an RPG.

This kid is a gamer. So much so that last summer he begged us to do something with video game classes and I discovered ID Tech Camp, which are held at various universities. He stayed in the dorm for a week and had a great time.

When we arrived for family day where we'd see his video game creation and pick him up, the instructor pulled his mom and I aside and whispered, "We had a bit of a problem with him." Not something you want to hear as a parent and we were prepared for the worst, but the "problem" was due to the fact that he learned the game creation software, built his game and was done two days early! They couldn't regroup fast enough to handle his abilities.

He started in on his begging routine a few days ago asking me to PLEASE, OH PLEASE download the demo of RPG Maker. I was reluctant since it only runs on the PC, we've dumped the one we had at home and he'd have to use my MacBook Pro with Parallels running Windows XP. Not a big deal, but knowing him he'd never let go of a computer I use all the time!

My guy is out there right now completing his first level. He was confused about how to work the software and had no training other than going through the Help screens and playing with the software. He has an intuitive understanding of the logic that I don't have since he's played hundreds of hours of games. That logical understanding provides him with a feel for how a game should be laid out and how levels should be structured before someone can proceed to the next one.

In less than 30 minutes, he's created the first level, added a character, figured out how to give it attributes (and colored its hair and added a costume and cape), and has chosen fun music to narrate the game play.

I see his understanding of systemic logic played out with mobile phones, computers, and any other digital device as well as his understanding of how systems work (even something like a lock and dam on the Mississippi river we visited when he was 10 years old. He almost instantly understood how it worked). It's why the woefully inadequate technology he has in school means that virtually NONE of his systemic-oriented accelerated learning will be occur in school. We're fortunate to be able to afford new tech and I'm a gadget hound, so he's got access to stuff most kids don't.

His expectations using Web sites and software is that they just work. That he can manipulate, hack and interact with them. That they'll give him what he wants without alot of goofing around.

Funny last point: Since the RPG Maker didn't need his full attention, he's watching one of his recorded shows on our DVR while laying out his new RPG game.

Why there are no technoweenie, geek or propellerhead comedians

Every April Fool's day I am stunned that -- with 50,000 standup comedian's out of work* -- that technoweenies, geeks and propellerheads are making free jokes.

If they were good jokes I wouldn't mind. If the humor was leveraging the collective consciousness or there was an open source joke ecosystem giving us true hilarity, I wouldn't mind. Perhaps a thousand techies working on a joke might actually get me to collapse in laughter reading/hearing it instead of wondering why my mouth rarely cracks even the hint of a smile.

Imagine a standup comedian at the Laugh Factory telling any of these:

• Why did the Comp. Engineer get X-mas and Halloween mixed up? A: Because Oct(31) == Dec(25)!'

• Q: How many software engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

  A: Sorry, that's a hardware question.

• A mechanical, a hydraulic engineer, and a software engineer were driving along a narrow mountain road, when the brakes fail, the car goes out of control, and crashes into a tree. They are a hundred miles from home, and it's starting to rain.
  
  The mechanical engineer examines the brake shoes and see that they have multiple stress fractures, and need to be replaced. The hydraulic engineer examines the brake lines and sees that the pressure is way below minimum, and that they need more brake fluid. The software engineer looks at the the other two engineers and says:
  
  "It's just a crash. Help me push me push it back out to the road and we'll try it again." 

Oh geez...oh man....those are just hilarious and -- hang on a second -- I'm OK now...I just had to wipe up the milk that snorted out of my nose. (Disclaimer: I actually didn't find them amusing but wrote that sentence for dramatic effect).

But something troubles me about the functionally-humor-challenged people residing in geekdom...