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Posted by Richard Ziade on January 31, 2006, 05:20PMGoogle Earnings Fall Short. News at 11.
So Google reported earnings today and came in well below guidance. I don't know a lot about the markets or the shady happenings of after hours trading, but as of this posting Google is trading at $68 less (15%) than at market close (according to Yahoo! Finance).
This ain't pretty, and after the Yahoo! whoopin' a few weeks ago, the overall picture of search/ad-based businesses like these isn't so great. Sure, there's a lot of money to be made, but from where I'm sitting, the search market - however large - is finite. Google spends an enormous amount of money on initiatives that don't generate money. Yahoo! has been buying up companies like Flickr and del.icio.us that also don't make money. The vice is going to continue to tighten. Eventually, you gotta pay the bill.
But wait, it gets even more interesting...
Google, Yahoo! and all the Web mini-players have to contend with one more wrinkle: their businesses live and thrive inside the browser's walls. And there's only so much you can deliver to keep putting eyeballs on those web ads. Microsoft is watching all this with a smirk. The desktop is about to be lit up through all sorts of remote services like we've never seen before. Yahoo! knows it, so they bought Konfabulator (now Yahoo! Widgets). Google knows it, that's why they're on their way to building some sort of desktop.
It's going to be interesting to watch this play out. There's a lot of good thinking and innovation happening today, but very little of it is tied to real, accountable business (and no, dolling up a startup for a Yahoo! acquisition is not real). Hopefully this signal from Google won't put a damper on that innovation but rather encourages a tighter connection to real, tangible business goals.
Create RSS Feeds Out Of Thin Air
Ok maybe not thin air, but InstantRSS will create feeds from web pages that have been tagged up with their special tags. It's pretty handy.
They've gone ahead and done this with Google search results. GooRSS delivers Google results via RSS. Also very handy...at least until Google sends over the Cease & Desist to shut them down.
A List Apart : In Search Of The Holy Grail
A List Apart seeks out the Holy Grail (in CSS design that is - the three column layout, revisited).
Posted by Richard Ziade on January 30, 2006, 07:52AMAll Feeds Are Not Created Equal
When a feed has something new to say, almost all RSS readers do just about the same thing: they bold out the feed channel and display the number of new entries available for reading. Some take it up a notch and display a nice little notifier if there are new things to read (FeedDemon comes to mind, and Bloglines has one you can download). That helps as well. But that’s not enough. The truth is different feeds mean different things to me. The hallowed promise of RSS was to help us deal with information overload. As RSS becomes more and more popular (and as my subscription list grows), I often feel like I'm running in place, sifting through mounds of potentially interesting information to get to the stuff that matters to me most. For RSS to scale, I think some things need to change.
When something new comes in over a feed, I sort of liken it today to a knock on the door. I’m going about my business and suddenly I get tapped that there’s something new to read. Excellent. It’s a hell of a lot better than proactively hopping from site to site to see if anything is up. That worked well…for awhile. Today, the analogy acts out a bit differently. Every 15 or 30 minutes, my feedreader goes out and checks my 250 or so feeds. And what happens? Forty people come knocking at my door…all at once. That’s not so bad, except that different people mean different things to me. Some matter more to me than others. Some rarely come knocking, but when they do, it’s almost always worth hearing. Some show up all the time, overwhelming me with visits. I don’t want to turn them away, but I’d like to give others a chance as well.
All feedreaders today use the same, generic door knocker to let me know something’s new. I’m still left with the work of contending with tons of information. Sifting. Sorting. Flagging. Tagging. “I’ll get to it later.” It feels a hell of a lot like email. In many ways, the success of feed syndication has sort of pushed the experience back to square one.
And it’s only going to get worse. Today, we deal with information sources that are primarily of two species: blogs and institutional news sources (like magazines and newspapers). Eventually, new types of sources will arrive that are very different in nature to what we subscribe to today. Imagine a feed that notified me when inventory crossed a critical threshold. I don’t want that guy waiting at my doorstop with 30 other feeds that have something to say. The nature of that source is different, and as such, the method of notification needs to change.
Even today, some feeds matter way more to me then others. I’m still forced to seek them out, and as my reading list grows, it's getting harder to do so. All feeds are not created equal. And as such, users should be empowered with the ability to amplify certain feeds over others. This is less about finding the stuff that matters to me and more about - in the spirit of RSS - getting the stuff that matters to come to me first.
The crowd around my front door is pouring out into the street. I’d hate to have to turn some of them away.
Posted by Richard Ziade on January 29, 2006, 11:01AMThe TechCrunch Index
An index of all TechCrunch profiles. Also available in OPML.
Posted by Richard Ziade on January 27, 2006, 12:25PMMicrosoft Live Labs Debuts
Microsoft's own little playground for startup-like initiatives debuted a couple of days ago. It's called Live Labs. And the manifesto behind it is pretty interesting.
Microsoft has been forced to mobilize in response to drastic change before. They're competitive and paranoid enough to gather the energy to battle. They've got a ways to go. A visit to their various experiments reveals mostly a collection of things that are more reactions and re-brandings than innovations. Live.com was borne out of a response. Now the task is to actually debut stuff that isn't a Microsoft-branded del.icio.us or Gmail. They've done the right thing so far: they've institutionalized it made it something tangible (rather than groups of people nodding in agreement in hallways).
Free PDF Graph Paper Downloads
For all you designers out there, free blank PDF graph/grid/lined paper downloads.
AJAX Is Just a Saw
We had a marketing firm approach us yesterday telling us that all their clients (they do all sorts of digital branding) are asking for AJAX. I laughed – on the inside.
Customers asking for AJAX is like a prospective homeowner walking over to the contractors hired to do the building and handing them a saw. “I’d really like it if you used this particular saw to build my home.”
AJAX is just a tool. It’s tempting for firms to take on new business based on a technology trend that more and more people are starting hear about - and ask for. It’s also tempting for developers to do stuff that interests and excites them. AJAX is a weapon. Like all weapons, it should be used with forethought and good judgment. The ultimate driver should be the net result on the end-user’s experience.
Posted by Richard Ziade on January 26, 2006, 08:51AMYahoo Buying Digg?
So the rumor mill is churning this morning on news that a Yahoo! buyout of Digg is imminent. If it happens, Yahoo! will be the undisputed Big Chomping Monster that ate all those neat folksy Web 2.0 startups.
Maybe I'm just not picking up the right signals regarding the merits/value of these acquisitions. I've talked about it before. With a Digg buyout you've got an even more interesting scenario: from what I can gather, Digg's primary source of ads is from...(dramatic pause)...Google.
I can see the headlines now...
Posted by Richard Ziade on January 25, 2006, 01:41PMGoogle, China And Murky Waters
At the risk of trudging into the murky and sticky waters of politics, somebody help me understand this: Google agrees to censor certain content on their new China service but refuses to cooperate with the U.S. government on turning over search histories.
Mind you, I don't even want to get into the merits of the U.S. government's request. I know too little about it. It's just sort of curious to see obviously different standards applied. The cynic in me says that the China decision is about money and the U.S. decision isn't.
Regardless, the cynic in me uses Google all day long and doesn't want my search patterns passed along to the authorities. Then again, the cynic in me isn't in China...
Ask Jeeves Amps Up Image Search
Ask Jeeves boosted the capabilities of their image search. I play around a bit and it's pretty cool. Details here.
Google : How Do Developers Use HTML
The freaks at Google went balistic and scanned over a billion web documents and gathered all sorts of data about them. This is all for the purpose of coming up with a new version of HTML (who knew?). Nothing really shochking here but worth a look.
Sparkle vs. Flash : Here We Go
Microsoft released public betas of its various “Sparkle” tools (publicly known as Microsoft Expression). This is the proverbial “Flash killer” and it should probably be taken seriously by graphic and front-end designers alike. I don’t know too much about this, but I think these are the tools that generate the XAML (Microsoft’s XML-based front-end markup language) and the scripting code that lives behind them. Publish.com has an excellent overview of the releases.
If you look at the screenshots in that article, you can’t help but note the eerie similarity between these tools and Adobe’s Flash (the timeline snapshot is a dead giveaway). The lines are being drawn folks. Both Adobe and Microsoft are shooting way past AJAX and such to deliver far richer interactive experiences that will not only live in your browser but on your dekstop as well. The engine to drive these tools on the Microsoft side will be built into Vista.
To counter, Adobe is working on a project called Apollo that seeks to integrate PDF and Flash. For me, that’s not the exciting part of Apollo. The exciting part is seeing Flash land on the desktop and tap into services over the wire. Couple this initiative with Adobe’s Flex Builder (now in alpha at Adobe Labs) and you’ve got Adobe’s and Microsoft’s guns aiming right for each other.
So who’s gonna win? In my oh-so-humble opinion it’s the player that:
- delivers a toolset that is easy for developers to pick up and play with;
- leverages pre-existing skills and knowledge;
- doesn’t require a massive development environment and the stars to line up to whip something together and throw it out there;
- allows others to see an app, view the source, poke around and learn on their own;
- can somehow gradually integrate into existing experiences. It’s a lot harder for a software group to stomach a full migration to an entirely new platform than an incremental one that gains wins in small steps. AJAX allows that today.
Microsoft is notorious for unloading way too many levers and switches on people. The result is a higher barrier of adoption. Adobe has it’s own challenges. They have to work hard to reshape the perception of Flash as a real development platform.
In any respect, it’ll be a lot of fun to watch and hopefully we’ll see some great applications come out of all this.
Posted by Richard Ziade on January 24, 2006, 01:42PMWidgets Via Firefox : Firefoxit
Here's an interesting alternative to Yahoo! Widgets (formerly known as Konfabulator). Firefoxit is a Firefox extension that allows you to create widgets that live outside of Firefox. I haven't tried this yet so take it all with a grain of salt. But the download is 600K - far leaner than the 11+ megs required to run Yahoo! Widgets. It's probably worth looking at.
ScienceBlogs
ScienceBlogs is a nice little network of science blogs covering topics from anthropology to politics. My favorite is the cognitive science category. Check it out.
Posted by Richard Ziade on January 23, 2006, 02:57PMTaking RSS Beyond Headlines : Part One
Before I dig into some of the more obscure uses of RSS (in a future post), I figured I'd list out all sorts of creative ways RSS can be used beyond news headlines and blogs. Here goes:
- Track Specific News Headlines. You can keep track of news on particular topics by subscribing to specific news search results. Here’s a constantly updated news search on the Seattle Seahawks via Google. Here’s another by Yahoo! that tracks the headlines coming in on the U.S. Supreme Court. To subscribe, just do your search and find the RSS feed link.
- Find Shopping Deals. Another cool use of RSS is the ability to get entries when a shopping deal or coupon comes along. Slickdeals (feed), Ben’s Bargains (feed) and MoreStuff4Less (feed) are just a few of the feeds out there.
- Track Packages. Nobody enjoys visiting a site and punching in a tracking number just to get shipment status on a package. Simpletracking.com allows you to create a custom feed that gets updated as your package moves along its route. UPS, Fedex, USPS & DHL are supported.
- Create a Calendar Feed. This is a cool way to share events with others. RSSCalendar.com allows you to create an account, add events and meetngs, and then share a feed for others to consume. They can use a standard feed reader or the RSSCalendar.com site to keep track.
- TV Listings Via RSS. Track programming on your favorite TV channels via Bootleg RSS.
- Track Weather. Get weather updates via RSSWeather. Here’s the weather in New York City as of this posting.
- Keep Up With Specific Emails Via RSS. Mailbucket will pump any emails into a feed that you forward to slurp@mailbucket.org. Just create an Outlook rule against whatever (e.g. emails from particular senders) and get the sent out to a feed once they come in. Just keep in mind that such feeds are unencrypted and can be consumed by others.
- Get Some General Knowledge On A Regular Basis. Not that you need it, but you can enrich your mind and impress people at cocktail parties by subscribing to daily feeds that send along a Word Of The Day (via Wordsmith.org), Quote of the Day (via Brainy Quote), or how about a bit of wisdom with a daily fortune cookie?
- Follow Your Favorite Comics. Tapestry Comics keeps track of a whole bunch of RSS feeds including Dilbert and Peanuts.
- Sports Team RSS Feeds. Follow the goings-on of your favorite sports team. Yahoo! delivers feeds for professional baseball, football, hockey and basketball.
- Deliver Your Contacts Via RSS. If you need to keep track of your contacts on different machines or want to share your contacts with friends, RSSContact.com allows you to create a feed and upload your contact information to do just that.
- Get Notified On Travel Deals. Looking to pounce on a good deal to a particular destination? Get notified on deals to particular cities. Travelocity let’s you build your own custom feed for tracking. Orbitz tracks a whole bunch of feeds to a many cities.
There’s still other stuff out there. These are just a few of the ways RSS can do more than news headlines. Just about all of the above are compatible with your favorite news reader or portal site (like My Yahoo!, Google’s personalized page or Netvibes). Enjoy!
Update: A follow-up, second article on taking RSS beyond headlines has been published here.
Posted by Richard Ziade on January 22, 2006, 07:30PMBasement.org Operational Again
Subscribers to basement.org may have noticed their feed readers tripping on retrieving this site's feed. A few days ago, Movable Type barfed up on me. I've moved the whole site to a new hosting provider and a new MySQL instance of MT. All is well now (so far). Hopefully its smooth sailing from now on.
Wizlite : Collaborative Highlighting
Wizlite : Collaborative Highlighting. Pretty neat.
Posted by Richard Ziade on January 19, 2006, 12:27PMFeedLounge Launches...And Has The Nerve To Ask For Money
Here’s an idea: put out a service and, starting from Day 1, charge money for it. Not very Web 2.0. Nor is it very Google-like. I’ve rambled on in the past about how all this free stuff with cute names and friendly candy-like colors has to give somehow – whether by ads or by asking people to pony up some cash.
A new web-based feed reader called FeedLounge just debuted (it’s been in beta for awhile) and they’re asking for…*gasp*…money! $5 a month to be exact. Hey, good for them. I’d be glad to pay $5/mo. if a particular service kicks ass and keeps ads out of my face.
The vice is tightening folks. Yahoo is feeling it. Google will eventually feel it (unless they just use all their cash to buy traditional revenue generators). And of course, the little guys and their financial backers (if they have any) will feel it.
So good luck to the FeedLounge team. My only gripe is they don’t even have a trial period. There’s some sort of “three hour tour” but I don’t even understand it. Hey, if it’s that good guys, let people get a taste of it.
Basement.org's New Home
Welcome to the new home of basement.org. The site crashed yesterday so I decided to move hosting providers and finally use MySQL instead of the embedded database that comes with Movable Type. Hopefully this result in much less pain in maintaining the site.
Posted by Richard Ziade on January 16, 2006, 11:55AMI Don't Hate Macs, I Just Hate Mac Users
Ok, before I dig into the substance of this post, I’d like to preface it with an explanation of the title. I don’t really hate anyone. Hatred is an awful thing. When I say “hate,” I mean it in a casual, chatting-over-lunch sort of way. Like when we say “I hate the Red Sox.” It doesn’t mean you wish to kill them all (though you may say that as well). It just means you, well, hate them. It’s like…Hate Lite. Now on to the substance of this post…
I consider myself a tinkerer. I enjoy opening up a PC box and just messing around. I’m into the intricacies of the different components and how they can be tweaked and optimized and customized. Hell, there’s a whole subculture of PC modding out there. I mean, who wouldn’t want to trick out there PC case with neon lighting and water cooling? Yeh, I subscribe to Maximum PC. What’s wrong with that? In fact, I think there’s a lot right with it. The willingness to crack open your “rig”and replace the hard drive controller is a virtue. There’s something inherently endearing about someone willing to roll up their sleeves and work on something.
Yes, I know it’s not for everyone. Sure, you can hire someone to do it. Of course you can just buy a custom PC with all the bells and whistles. The hardcore techies of the world scoff at the masses that brush this sort of stuff aside. “They don’t understand us. We will make them pay handsomely for their ignorance.” They are the Left Brain.
At the other extreme is the bratty computer user. They simply can’t be bothered with such details. They don’t have time (or better yet, their time is too valuable to be wasted on such trivialities). They have…more important things to do. As such, they “love” and “adore” their Macs. Because admittedly, Macs are inherently better designed. From hardware to software, things just seem to work. As a designer, I often reference Apple for their unwavering belief in the power of good design. It really is the differentiator.
It’s a great thing when you can design products that make your users feel good about themselves. Good design is inherently complimentary, subtly flattering the user as he interacts. People wonder why there is such rabid loyalty towards Apple. This is why. Apple has spoiled them. They’ve been treated with such dignity and high regard that their collective self-esteem has been inflated beyond belief.
So now the rest of us (your humble blogger included) are left to hear their ramblings about how great Apple products are. How much they love their Macs and iPods. And how lame it is for us to have to worry about things like PCI slots and firmware. The Mac population’s view of the PC user base is nothing short of elitist. All those hugs and support growing have led them to snarl at the “lower class” PC users of the world.
The misunderstanding arises from the fact PC users actually like defragmenting their hard drives and upgrading their firmware. We enjoy replacing our graphics cards every six months. We love TweakUI! We share a firm belief that our struggle in this world will lead us to heaven. You Mac users, on the other hand, are on your way to hell. A weird, glossy white plastic hell.
So there you have it. Mac users are the bourgeoisie of the computing world. PC users are the lowly, struggling proletariat, harboring bitterness and resentment towards their snooty counterparts while they toil away at their machines.
And what of the Linux users? Well, they’re just lumpen.
Updated January 9, 2007 : Yes, that weird glossy white plastic hell has frozen over. I bought a Mac.
Netvibes Introduces Delicious Module
The Netvibes crew continue to churn at a frightening pace. They’ve just released a nice implementation of delicious. I like how the tags lay out. Nicely done.
Another reason I like Netvibes over the Google/Microsoft/Yahoo! variety is that, unlike the others, Netvibes doesn’t have their own services to position above others. Instead you get a more “neutral” front page experience.
Posted by Richard Ziade on January 12, 2006, 03:46PMFind Bloggers With OpinMind
One of the things I fear is getting “stuck” with the same select group of voices that I pay attention. I enjoy discovering a blog I should’ve had in my list previously.
Opinmind is an interesting tool that let’s you search for bloggers by topic. It lists out both positive and negative commentary about a given topic. Pretty cool.
Yahoo! Feed/Blog Alert
Yahoo! continues to lead the way among the big boys on RSS. Via Yahoo! Alerts, now you can get notified via email, mobile and IM when a particular feed gets updated.
I haven’t tried this yet and I’m not sure how often it pings you (or intervals, etc.). It’s cool stuff nonetheless. RSS outside the web. Nice.
Posted by Richard Ziade on January 11, 2006, 11:25AMMacBook Pro...Umm OK?
So wait, help me understand this…
I thought we were at an exciting time in technology? I thought our thinking was being reset. New ideas. New inventions. If that’s the case, then why is the proverbial Bar (capital “B”) been set so woefully low by bloggers and the press alike?
Last week, Google had us all doing tricks for the next biscuit treat at last week’s CES keynote. So what do they give us? Well, they gave us…nothing really. Well, it is something. It’s a collection of trialware and shareware, bundled up with some of Google’s own stuff for download. It’s pretty much the same clutter most of us uninstall when we first boot up our Dell boxes. Regardless, we all got sort of excited. Maybe it’s just Pavlovian at this point.
So yesterday, the Cult of Apple gathered ‘round to the Altar of Steve Jobs to see what was next. And of course, they cheered and clapped for…a faster laptop. And the masses exalted. Hell, some of them even started crying. It’s, you know, faster. As if we aren’t perpetually bombarded with faster, more powerful hardware on a regular basis. I mean, it’s not even incidental. Moore’s Law practically requires us to keep going faster and faster. Mind you this thing is four to five times faster. That’s a lot faster. Of course, that’s comparing it to the previous generation that was introduced nearly four years ago. So if you do the math, 4X is exactly where we should be. Man, that Moore guy sure was smart.
Of course that’s not all. There’s one other feature that really got the crowd going.: The power supply. Well, not the power supply itself, just the plug end. That’s right. It’s not just any power supply. It has a magnet or something built into it so it elegantly unplugs if your drunk roommate rushes over to show you some new video that’s spreading around YouTube.
So yeh, welcome to this new kind of hype. It’s sort of like glorified infomercials. Maybe there just isn’t that much to say on the Web every single day. So we can’t help but just talk about and get excited about everything.
[Author’s Note: I’ll admit that part of the motivation behind this posting is the desire to get a rise out of, and thus garner scathing, hurtful commentary from the Apple zealots out there. So have at it.]
Posted by Richard Ziade on January 10, 2006, 10:46AMRight-Mouse Click Package Tracking
Here’s a neat little Firefox extension for all you shopping freaks out there. Simpletracking.com’s Package Tracking Extension allows you to track a package with a right-mouse click. It supports UPS, FedEx & USPS.
Google Video Store Open For Business
As announced at CES, Google Video now allows the purchase of videos. Some details here.
Google Pack : Umm....Ok?
Somebody help me out with this one. CES is all about getting a peak at the next big thing. Hardware and devices. New tools. New software. It's the stuff that isn't out yet. Neat new gadgets and devices and such.
Amidst all this stuff is....(long dramatic pause)....the Google Pack. A collection of already available software and trialware all bundled together. The release of the Google Pack isn't what's interesting. What's interesting is the leeway and deference allowed to the Google name right now. Who else could introduce what is essentially nothing at a CES keynote speech? What's also interesting, is the oddly warm reception the blogging community has given it. A few have shown some skepticism. Nicholas Carr thinks it's a trojan horse - a way to get an updater on your PC so Google can pump its wares right into your desktop. That's sort of icky (and possibly evil?). But I'll avoid the conspiracy theory bait for the time being. I'm far more interested in the strange state of sedation the Google brand has cast upon so many.
Over the past 24-36 months, the Google Brand stockpiled a lot of goodwill from just about everyone - and it was often well-deserved. The search really was (and pretty much still is) second to none. And Google Maps - well that was just plain sexy.
But this thing? In my eyes at least, they've cashed in some of that brand equity. Somebody should tell the Iranians they're not missing much.
AJAX Desktops : A (Very) Quick Comparison
The Second Coming of personal portal pages has been fun to watch. I'm not a big fan of portals from an interaction design perspective. I find them to be too...generic (that's for another blog entry). Regardless, they can be very useful if designed correctly and with the right set of features.
Of course, the big players have their offerings:
- Microsoft's incubation experiment Start.com (and it's sibling Live.com)
- Google's Personalized Hompage
- Yahoo's My Yahoo.
Then you've go some of the lesser-known upstarts:
- Protopage (a sort of virtual desktop for the Web)
- Netvibes
- Goowy (a Flash-based desktop with an impressive email and calendaring piece).
- Eskobo (which looks eerily similar to Microsoft's offering).
In my oh-so humble opinion, the hands-down winner is Netvibes. It's fast, straightforward, and constantly growing. It can pull in your email (POP or IMAP), supports sticky notes and to-do lists, along with your usual weather and RSS support. It handily took care of my 200+ OPML feed list import (many throw up on it or hang). What is really impressive is the speed with which the Netvibes team is improving upon and fixing Netvibes. Their blog provides insight into an impressively agile development process. Take a look at how many features were introduced in the last 20 days alone. Frightening. The big boys should stop and look at what these guys are doing. Very impressive.
Taking RSS Beyond Headlines
I'm a huge fan of RSS and it's potential. I think it's simplicity belies its real power. I also think it's simplicity is a big reason why people haven't thought about it more broadly as a mechanism for proactive information delivery. I think there's a lot more to it than headlines and blog entries.
So to combat the narrow perception of RSS that exist today, I'm going to blog a series of entries called Taking RSS Beyond Headlines where I'll give examples of how RSS can be used in potentially useful ways beyond news syndication.
Check back soon or subscribe to basement.org's feed for more.
Blogger Web Comments Extension
A lesser-known Firefox extension put out by Google a few weeks ago is the Blogger Web Comments for Firefox. I installed it a few weeks ago and I've got to say, I really enjoy using it.
It works like this: when you're on any web page, a small icon in the status bar spins around and tells you if other bloggers have commented about the page you're looking it. If they have, it presents an in-line summary of the entries right there on the page in the bottom-right corner. Nice stuff.
Making Software Pay Attention
When we use a piece of technology - whether a web browser, a portable music player, or a cable box - really anything that deals with content delivery and manipulation - we provide an invaluable amount of raw data about our behaviors, interests and habits. Almost all these devices today simply operate as workers - never doing more than what's asked of them: play that song, display that article, record that movie. Once the task is completed, these devices (for the most part) completely forget what was asked of them and simply wait for the next task request.
A relatively unimpressive exception to this rule is the common display of "Recent...whatever." Office applications remember the last few files you loaded for easier retrieval. Many mobile phones have a "Recent Activity" list of some sort (missed calls, outgoing calls, etc.). But beyond these basic conventions, there isn't much else. And that's too bad. I think there's enormous value in paying attention to and remembering information on a couple of levels:
Morphing Interfaces. Imagine an interface that paid close attention to how you worked, the assets you cared about, or even more impressively the patterns and habits of your usage. Over time, the interface would change in some subtle ways to better accomodate the way you work. The Microsoft Office applications have been doing this for awhile. Certain menu items hide away if they're rarely used. The down side of this approach is that people are accustomed to things staying in the same place. There's an appeal to the predictability of a rigid, yet carefully thought-out interface. I don't think I want my car's controls changing slightly anytime soon. That said, I still think there's more to explore here.
Learn. Connect. Share. The Internet and the progression towards cheaper and easier connectivity among and between computers and devices opens up all sorts of possibilities. Rather than your audio player being this isolated island of knowledge about your habits, it can go ahead and broadcast out to others (either by Wifi in real-time or when you sync up your player). Imagine Nielsen ratings based upon portable audio player usage. Or the ability to stumble on someone else's playlist in the same coffee shop because their musical interests somewhat overlap yours. This kind of thinking is already happening. An awesome evolution of RSS is the ability for software to track what we pay attention to and fold that into a larger repository. Hell, it's impressive enough if my feed reader could do this for me alone (an upcoming version of FeedDemon is slated to have this feature).
It's exciting stuff, but one step at a time I suppose. Let's first get software to start paying attention - close attention - to what we consume and how we work. Once software starts paying attention, all sorts of cool things are possbile.
The Microsoft-Apple Soap Opera
Like a never-ending plotline, Microsoft and Apple have stolen ideas from one another, writting software for one another, and even invested in one another (a few years ago, Apple was in dire straits and Microsoft invested in them to keep them afloat). It's like a soap opera that goes on and on.
Many, many years ago, Bill Gates warned Apple that they should let go of the hardware and open it up - the same way IBM did - and focus on software and licensing. Apple never did and it's fate was mostly stagnant and (and often times nearly fatal) for many years. Nevertheless, they continue to design and sell software and hardware as a single experience.
Flash forward to today and you have the spectacular success of the iPod. Walking around Best Buy during the holiday's, it wasn't even a race anymore. The mindshare was all gone. If you really loved your girlfriend or boyfriend, you'd buy them nothing but an iPod. Part of the reason for iPod's success is iTunes and the elegant way Apple masked the often clumsy interplay between software and hardware into a more frictionless experience. So it turns out there was some silver lining in Apple's decision after all.
This week at CES, Bill Gates unveiled Microsoft's play into digital entertainment (both music and movies). It's called Urge and it's billed as a competitor to iTunes. Gates talks about the benefits of a seamless experience that spans across devices...except iPods.
Microsoft built it's empire by allowing hardware to get commoditized (for the most part) and leveraging the value of software. Dell's & HP's run Microsoft's operating system and applications. The interaction (via keyboard and mouse) is nearly identical regardless of hardware. But the iPod/iTunes experience is another species. I can't help but wonder how Microsoft can fight this battle when you have hundreds of devices designed and built by many manufacturers that all behave and interact differently. I don't think it's possible for them to compete with a platform that transcends software and hardware (if it isn't too late to begin with).
And so, Apple's nearly fatal decision to continue to market both hardware and software years ago is now their weapon in this battle. I'm sure Gates showed some cool things at CES. And I'm sure he shared the stage with some "partners." And I think that highlights the core question: can you divvy up the experience among a handful of "chefs in the kitchen." I don't think so.
Typedrawing
Typedrawing : A very neat little tool to draw with typography. You can save and animate your work.
Google PC & The End Of The Web
The LA Times is reporting that Google is planning to put out cheap PC's that "run on an operating system created by Google" (most likely some Linux variant). Analysts are calling them "Google Cubes," a small hardware box that sells for a couple of hundred bucks. They're apparently in talks with Wal-Mart to sell such a device. The rest of the article lays out a whole slew of other rumors. I have no idea how credible it is and I haven't seen this news anywhere else (not on tech.meme for example).
The theory behind a "Google PC" has been around for awhile (along with the theory behind a "Google Browser"). It's all kind of exciting and kind of scary at the same time. I'm not sure what it will mean for developers in terms of what the platform is and how we'll have to conform to play in this "arena" that Google would be setting up.
Wearing the hat of an end-user, the prospects are even more frightenting. Google may well be targeting an audience that the tech community often ignores and Microsoft has enjoyed catering to: the less-than-savvy PC user. This user equates the Internet with "AOL" and often can't distinguish between malicious software and friendly software. They're your typical casual web user. At the risk of sounding paternalistic, I can't help but think about the risks of one entity not only controlling the device or platform that they use to access the Web, but the content that is delivered as well. Controlling both ends of that experience is a hell of a lot of power to put in one place. It isn't only about privacy and security. It's about the free flow of information.
In other words, is the Web (capital "W") - as this decentralized network of information sources that is woven together today - still a web (small "w") if you've got this single monolithic conduit "managing" the information that is delivered out to a population of users. As the search experience continues to evolve as the dominant method of information retrieval, Google morphs from a mere search engine to "provider of all information." Once that happens, the capital-W Web isn't a web anymore. It's all eminating from one place.
There's another blog post in here somewhere about the commoditziation of data and how Google can become the Wal-Mart of information. But I'll spare you the conspiracy theories. For now, a Google PC is frightening enough.
Update: This was apparently denied by both Google & Wal-Mart. You'd figure the L.A. Times was a little better than this.