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Thursday, January 01, 2004 |
I like the visual representation
of RSS feeds at Furrygoat. What would be more useful for me is if the
size of the post rectangle was dependent on the number of comments,
trackbacks, and clickthrough traffic to the permalink. [John Robb's Weblog] 
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How will we get end users to upgrade to Longhorn. Jupiter Media Analyst Michael Gartenberg wonders how Microsoft will get end users to upgrade to Longhorn in an era of "good enough" computing.
"So I’m struggling with where the benefits and gains are. If
users don’t start to understand the benefits of Longhorn in 2004 and
what they will gain, really gain from upgrading, then the OS team in
Redmond will begin to echo the old Pogo cartoon and the enemy they meet
will be themselves when it comes time to get users to upgrade."
Michael has a good point. But, we haven't even begun to talk about
the end user benefits of Longhorn. There's a reason for that. We're two
years away (at least) and if we hype up Longhorn to end users then
they'll stop buying XP and wait for Longhorn to ship. That would be a
bad thing.
Much of the reason for people to upgrade to Longhorn will come from
the people who read this weblog, though. New games. New business apps.
New RSS news readers. New ways of communication. New ways to solve
problems.
But, I know a lot of people think it's hopeless. That software is
dead. That innovation can't come from this industry anymore and that
we're all destined to have our jobs turned into commodities and shipped
overseas. You can see the cynicism in the comment threads here.
The heck with that. The next few years are gonna see more change in
computing than the past 10. But, let's meet in 2005 and see how it's
going, OK?
I talk to average users and they are ready for a new kind of system.
One with a different user interface. One that helps them find their
files. One that takes advantage of the processor power and GPU power
and hard drive space and new technologies (like LCDs you can write on).
The more "non geek" users I meet, the more excited I am. How about you? [The Scobleizer Weblog]
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Tom Peters is my guru. Over
the past week I've been reading a ton of business books. Patrick and I
go into the bookstore. He heads toward the Lord of the Rings books. I
head to the business section.
Interestingly there aren't any books that tell you how to weblog
while working for a multi-billion-dollar corporation. There aren't any
that I've found that teach you how to lead your company into a more
transparent age.
But there is Tom Peters.
I got his newest book "Re-imagine!"
for Christmas from my brother Ben (I asked for it after checking out
dozens of business books on the shelf at Borders in Palo Alto).
I look to business books to not only remind me of what I should be
doing but to get my brain firing again. Tom does it. He starts out his
first chapter by writing "I'm pissed off." And he wacks us all in an
effort to get business people to better serve customers.
Tom's the guy who wrote the best-selling "In Search of Excellence."
Over the next few weeks you'll see hints of Tom's influence in my thinking.
One of the most important chapters for everyone to read is chapter
13 titled "Women Roar." He explains why companies are blowing big money
by mistreating women. The stories he writes about are disheartening and
kicked my thinking into a new place. I saw evidence of this in the
camera store. I sold quite a bit of camera gear by simply being nice to
everyone. One woman came in the store literally crying because of how
she had been treated by a competitor. She ended up buying thousands of
dollars of equipment from me.
One interesting quote: "A prediction: At least 80 percent of
white-collar jobs, as we know them today, will either disappear or be
reconfigured beyond recognition--in just the next 15 years." Does that
scare the sh*t out of you? It does me. I wonder what I'll be doing in
15 years. How will we deal with the continued commoditization of our
industries and our jobs? That's what this book is all about.
One thing I love about Tom too is that he figured out how to keep
his book business from being commoditized. Really weblogs are
threatening his business. So, what did he do? Made a book experience
that's sorta like a weblog, but better. Lots of color. Lots of bullets.
Lots of sidebars. Lots of pictures. Is it worth $30? Hell yes. Oh, plus
he has a nice website with forums and everything (and the prerequisite
free chapter).
Every book author should check it out. It'll influence how books
will look in 2004. If I write a Longhorn book, it's how I want mine to
look. [The Scobleizer Weblog]
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Tantek improves my Weblog's Structure. Tantek
isthe guy who wrote the rendering engine for IE for the Mac (and is one
of Microsoft's guys who works with the W3C on Web standards) and he
gave me a lesson on CSS tonight at the geek dinner and showed me
several ways to make my weblog more accessible. Some things? Now I'm
using "H" tags to denote my titles. Another thing? I've added titles
back onto my weblog. Lastly? I'm now using the "id" attribute on my
title DIV so that I'm a step further toward getting rid of anorexic anchors. I'm still playing around. You can see Tantek's ideas on improving your weblog here. [The Scobleizer Weblog]
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Smart Displays Failed. Loren notes that the Smart Display has failed. Ahh, another Microsoft product joins "Bob" on the shelf of failed products.
Tom Peters notes that it's important to try and fail quickly. He
notes Silicon Valley is paved with the failures of hundreds of
companies and thousands of products.
Why did the Smart Display fail? Easy: its premise was based on
something that didn't appear: low cost "light client" computers that
would be dramatically cheaper than ones like Tablet PCs that have big
hard drives, more RAM, and need more processor power.
When I was at NEC we decided not to import NEC's Smart Displays to
the United States. Why? Because at $1000 we didn't see enough buyers.
Silicon Valley and other places have dreamed of a light-weight
client machine for a long time. Sun Microsystems is still trying to
sell its Java Desktop, which is really the same kind of idea.
What was a Smart Display? An LCD panel that would display images
from a high-power server. Interesting idea, if the cost were, say, $300
each (instead of $1000). Imagine having a server in your closet with,
say, a dozen panels, instead of a single Tablet PC. You could display
pictures on one. Recipes on another. Have your son playing a video game
on another. Your daughter doing homework on yet another. All hooked to
a server via WiFi.
For a factory floor this is a compelling idea. Except that the cost
couldn't be made low enough and wireless couldn't be made reliable
enough. Here when the wireless goes down I can still work on my Tablet
PC. If I had Smart Displays (which were really misnamed, since they
were "Stupid" displays -- all the smarts were on the server) then my
devices would be useless if wireless went down.
Translation: consumers didn't like the approach. Factory planners didn't see enough cost savings to go with this architecture.
Conclusion: come back and try again when there's a 10x difference in cost between a decent laptop/Tablet PC. [The Scobleizer Weblog]
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Booming concepts for 2003 that will do well in 2004 (initial list):
- RSS 2.0 aggregators and feeds: Wow, what a year! More feeds than any of us can keep up with!
- Cameraphones: More cameraphones were sold than digital cameras earlier this year. This will become ubiquitous.
- Guerrilla warfare (IEDs, RPGs, and suicide
cars): Watch what happens to Iraqi infrastructure over the next year.
Will the US stay in Iraq through the year with 2-3 casualties a day?
- Political weblogs (and political social
software): Dean has the oppportunity to build a third party based on
his campaign's Internet efforts. Nuff said.
- Personal hard-drives (multimedia players
with attachments): Storage is on a roll, step aside if you are in the
way. Watch for screens, TiVo like functionality, and more to take off.
- Second Superpower movements: All over the global map. Challenging nation-states and corporations everywhere. Powered by social technology.
- Professional virus developers. Watch 2004 to
see where many of the world's most talented software developers are
spending their time. This isn't for teenagers anymore. A virus with a
professional development cycle is an amazing thing to watch.
- Skype and VoIP software. On a roll. Simple and effective.
Bust concepts for 2003 that will continue to decline in 2004 (initial list):
- Personal privacy and fair use rights. Thank you MPAA and the RIAA!
- The Bill of Rights. Thank you Bush and the Patriot Act II!
- Cures for currently incurable diseases. Thank you to the Religious Right and the Bush Administration!
- Social networking software (it will take another year to work out how to use it correctly). Friendster et. al. in retreat.
- Most wanted lists. It takes more than eliminating certain despised individuals to change the world.
- Prosecution of corporate and financial bad behavior.
Not in my lifetime. Steal $1,000 from the house of the guy down the
street and he will chase you with a gun. Steal $1,000 from him via
abuse of his pension fund and he doesn't have a clue, nor do the
authorities have a clue how to prosecute the perps.
- P2P software. The lawsuits have done their work to slow adoption. Adware and spyware included with P2P systems have finished the job.
- The UN. On the run in 2003. Will continue in 2004. Without US support, the UN is useless.
[John Robb's Weblog]
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Next Gen Terrorism: Virtual operations. Do network-centric cells of
terrorists need to plan and coordinate moderate to large operations
along traditional lines? Probably not. Here's why. The traditional approach (at least the way I used to do it in
special ops) is to first gather a team of specialists to develop an
operations plan. The plan is then built, either over hours or days,
with a limited amount of flexibility built in. Time is closely managed.
Targets are precisely defined. Unit operations are tightly coupled to
ensure economy of force. In execution, the plan is overseen by
specialist team managers and senior staff. Decision makers on the
ground typically have little flexiblity other than to abort the
mission.
In the emerging world of next generation terrorism, enabled by rapid
communications and plentiful targets of opportunity, the traditional
approach is counterproductive. A loose approach composed of ad hoc
communications and individual initiative can provide much greater
levels of security and higher probabilities of success.
In this approach cells would develop a range of targets within
general guidelines (a section of a city) based on their capabilities (a
type of attack). The time schedule would be fluid. The date for an op
would be set within a general time frame without specifics. Coordinated
action would be done in an ad hoc manner. For example: "once your cell
begins operations, my cell will begins too." "Your cell just hit this
target, my cell will hit this complimentary target." Abort points would
be determined based on what each cell sees on the ground or what other
cells communicate to each other on the fly (ie. "flash me an SMS
message to abort and throw away the phone"). Ops could continue
indefinitely using this method until local conditions are too difficult
to ensure success.
The benefits of this approach would be as follows:
- Difficult to disrupt. The loss of any one cell
would not necessarily imperil the operation since there are few
co-dependencies. For example: if a single cell was shut down, other
cells could continue operations since no one cell would have another
cell's list of targets, an overarching mission plan, or require the
other cell's support to continue operations.
- Hard to defend against. The time period of
the op could be sufficiently large to make a high level readiness
difficult to maintain (could you imagine months of Orange alert?).
- Nearly impossible to detect. Decision
cycles would be slow and communications would only be made when
security was assured. Target selection would be wide ranging and
independently authored.
The real power of a framework like this is in its ability to disrupt systems. More on that later. [John Robb's Weblog]
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© Copyright 2004 William J. Maya.
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