Newly appointed Futurist-in-residence at the New York Times, Michael Rogers, spoke with Patrick Phillips from iwantmedia.com. I was particularly interested in what Rogers had to say about Times Reader, the hybrid web/desktop app built with Microsoft technology that aims to give a paper-like reading experience to the screen. He said that he doesn't see paper disappearing any time soon...
"However, we're within a few years of seeing some very effective electronic reading devices that finally do begin to challenge paper.
The new Times Reader, on a tablet PC, is already a pretty good experience. Spin that forward five years and you're starting to have a compelling alternative. Finally, in another decade, a substantial part of our audience will have grown up already doing much more of their reading on screen, and they're not likely to have the same emotional attachment to paper as does much of the current readership."
I also enjoyed this quote from Michael Rogers about what a 'futurist' does:
"I'm not sure that the real value of a futurist is to predict the future -- the future is always going to surprise us in one way or another -- but rather to get others thinking about it in a creative and flexible way."
Ah, so that's what the Pew report was supposed to do!
Pew has released its analysis of how the Internet will evolve over the next 14 or so years (2020). I'm inclined to agree with Om Malik that the conclusions about the technology are rather obvious: "a global, low-cost network will be thriving in 2020", which will bring about a "'flattening' of the world". You don't need to be Stanley Kubrick to figure that out.
The part I enjoyed the most was the section labeled: 'Thinking ahead to 2020: Some revealing quotations and predictions from the thousands of answers that were submitted to open-ended questions in the survey.'
I don't know if it was just me, but most of the predictions sounded remarkably like the plots or themes of famous sci-fi books or movies...
Some took inspiration from The Matrix movie...
"The evolution of smart machines: “Fear of enslavement by our creations is an old fear, and a literary tritism. But I fear something worse and much more likely – that sometime after 2020 our machines will become intelligent, evolve rapidly, and end up treating us as pets. We can at least take comfort that there is one worse fate – becoming food – that mercifully is highly unlikely.” – Paul Saffo, forecaster and director of The Institute for the Future"
Others took their cue from 2001: A Space Odyssey...
"“Until testing, bug fixing, user interfaces, usefulness and basic application by subjectmatter experts is given a higher priority than pure programmer skill, we are totally in danger of evolving into an out-of-control situation with autonomous technology.” – Elle Tracy, president of The Results Group"
There was the obligatory William Gibson-inspired Virtual Reality fantasy:
"The allure of virtual reality: “A human's desire is to reinvent himself, live out his fantasies, overindulge; addiction will definitely increase. Whole communities/subcultures, which even today are a growing faction, will materialise. We may see a vast blurring of virtual/real reality with many participants living an in-effect secluded lifestyle. Only in the online world will they participate in any form of human interaction.” – Robert Eller, technology consultant"
Even the boardgame Monopoly was evoked...
"How information disseminates: “Profit motives will impede data flow … Networks will conform to the public utility model, with stakeholders in generation, transmission, and distribution. Companies playing in each piece of the game will enact roadblocks to collect what they see as their fair share of tariff revenue.” – Peter Kim, senior analyst, Forrester Research"
But don't get me wrong, I love reading this stuff! It's just that I usually get my fix of such content from sci-fi books and movies :-)
A new documentary on Silicon
Valley premieres today on DVD. It was directed by my friend Steve O'Hear,
who I met over the Web earlier this year and now work with on my corporate
blogging project called Micro Media Corp. 'In Search of the Valley' is a movie
which tells the story of three friends' personal journey in September of 2004
into the psyche of Silicon Valley. Steve and his pals spent one month visiting
and talking to many of the valley's luminaries, including Apple's Steve Wozniak,
Adobe's John Warnock, and Craig Newmark of Craigslist.org. The film also
features Apple alumni Guy Kawasaki, Sandy Miranda, Andy Hertzfeld, Dan Kottke,
and the late Jef Raskin, as well as the computer pioneer Lee Felsenstein, Tim
O'Reilly and Marc Canter.
The DVD is being distributed via the Amazon-owned Customflix and is available to order from the film's website for $19.99 (available in NTSC only, which is region-free). What's more, R/WW readers save $2 when ordering by using the following discount code: JF9G55CU. I need to point out that I'm not getting any cut of the sale for this post. I'm recommending the movie because I watched and enjoyed an early preview - and I think R/WW readers will also enjoy it. Here is the film trailer, on YouTube:
The film really resonated with me - as someone who has also searched for the spirit of Silicon Valley. There is an especially poignant moment midway through when Steve played piano with Apple great Jef Raskin (the father of the Mac), who sadly passed away in Feb 2005 - just 5 months after Steve and friends visited him in his home.
Steve O'Hear with Jef Raskin
To celebrate the launch, I interviewed Steve about the making of the film...
Richard: What did you learn about Silicon Valley in the making of this video, being (like I was when I've visited) an outsider looking to find 'the spirit of the Valley'? Did you find it? ;-)
Steve: There is certainly an energy in the Valley, and an attitude and culture that is conducive to getting things done. As a result, very few of the people we approached for an interview questioned whether our small production crew could successfully make a film on Silicon Valley. Instead there were offers of help, and lots of people were willing to open up their contact books and put us in touch with relevant people. John Warnock (co-founder of Adobe) suggested that a key element of the Valley's success is that it is acceptable for people to challenge the existing ways of doing things (without fear of failure). Something which John referred to as Iconoclast. And I certainly think that this kind of counterculture - especially when applied to technology and business - is one of the main reasons why innovation is so prevalent in Silicon Valley.
Other important aspects to the Valley's success are obviously its long history of engineering and its strong ties with forward thinking universities, Stanford and Berkley. I also wouldn't underestimate the role of Venture Capital - without which it becomes a lot harder to start a new company.
However, before we set out to make the documentary, Lee Felsenstein (a pioneer of personal computing) advised me to view Silicon Valley more as a state of mind rather than a physical area. And he warned that capturing that state of mind, in its entirety, would be impossible because the Valley's always changing. In fact, very few of the people we talked to were originally from the Bay area, and so I'd suggest that the continuing influx of talented and creative people, who come to the Valley to pursue their own dreams and ambitions, is also a key driver of its success.
Richard: What were some of the key moments in the video - in terms of people you met or discussions that took place?
Steve: There are so many but I don't want to give them all away!
The film starts with looking at Silicon Valley's early history, with Andy Hertzfeld taking us to the original HP garage (the so-called birthplace of Silicon Valley). We then go on to explore the valley's culture, with reference to San Francisco and Berkley, and the story of the Home Brew Computer club - with Lee Felsenstien and Steve Wozniak giving us a really interesting insight into what drove the personal computer revolution.
Next up, we ask what motivates innovation in the valley. Is it making money or something more profound like changing the world? This is one of the key questions that the film attempts to answer.
We also retell the story of Macintosh and hear from many Apple alumni including Guy Kawasaki, Dan Kottke, and (as already mentioned) Andy Hertzfeld. In fact, one of my favourite parts of the movie is when I get to share the piano with the late Jef Raskin, who was responsible for starting the Macintosh project while an early employee of Apple. As I like to tell it, I jammed with the Mac Daddy!
Later, the movie takes on a more down-beat mood as we hear firsthand about the dot-com boom and bust. Our visit was in late 2004 and the Valley was still very much in recovery. Insights come from Tim O'Reilly, Brian Behlendorf, Bruce Damer, Marc Canter, Sally Richards, and Craig Newmark.
Richard: How did you get access to the people and places?
Steve: Before we got out to the Valley, we spent months researching the film. Lots of people were approached by email and we encouraged everybody who we contacted to give us the names of other interviewees who we should approach. For example, Tim O'Reilly (whom I'd met previously at a conference) was very generous in his introductions. The hardest to pin down was probably Woz, who actually asked us during the interview how we'd got through to him. Although he said he was glad that we did! A few of the people in the movie we made contact with once we'd arrived in the Bay area. The John Warnock interview was particularly fortunate as we met somebody who worked at Adobe and was friends with John's son. All we were were hoping for was a tour of the Adobe building, but luckily things escalated and we found ourselves interviewing John by his pool-side. Another highlight was when Bruce Damer gave us a private tour of his Digibarn Museum.
Richard: A continuing thread throughout the video was discussion of Steve Jobs - most people you interviewed had an opinion on him, not always favorable! What did you make of Steve Jobs after all that discussion?
Steve: I like and admire Steve Jobs, although I've never met him! In fact the closest I've come is to be in the audience during a few of his famous keynote presentations. So, what I tried to explore in the film was the aura and mythology of Steve Jobs - not Steve personally. Throughout the film we hear from those who have actually worked for or with Steve Jobs, as well as others in the industry who only know him by reputation. The overriding view is that he is a genius but (and perhaps because of this) he can also be difficult to work with.
Richard: How did you make use of Social Web technologies like blogs and media sharing? I hear you used customflix.com - what for exactly and why did you choose it?
Steve: We kept a blog of the trip and have used Google Video and YouTube to release teasers and a trailer for the film. I did attempt to set up a MySpace page, but that site really sucks when it comes to usability - so I gave up! For our DVD distribution we've chosen to use the on-demand DVD duplication service Customflix (which gets a big mention in Chris Anderson's Long Tail). It offers Independent filmmakers a low cost way of releasing their work on DVD.
In Search of the Valley is an enjoyable film and it's an excellent independent film project, which I know Steve has worked very hard on over the past few years. Don't forget that R/WW readers save $2 when ordering by using the following discount code: JF9G55CU. For more info, visit the film website, insearchofthevalley.com.
Another busy week of Web Tech news and analysis. Here is what we covered on Read/WriteWeb during the week (number of comments in brackets)...
OneWebDay: In Celebration Of The Web (2) - looks like this didn't take off in a big way, judging by the lack of blogosphere love for it. I still think it's a great idea though, a day to celebrate the Web.
Microsoft Plans Web-based Works Suite - Including Word Processing And Spreadsheets (4) - this news seemed to underwhelm people. Microsoft Works as a Web Office suite? People expect more innovation I think. But this is where Zoho, Zimbra and other small companies come into play.
Business Web Desktop From Salesforce.com (1) - personalized start pages come to the business world.
The Social Networking Faceoff (23) - Alex Iskold's latest Faceoff post noted that Orkut is perhaps more influential than most people think. But there was some robust discussion on the accuracy of the Alexa stats we used.
Breaking News: Facebook in talks with Yahoo for rumored $1B deal (9) - no confirmation from Yahoo sources yet, but according to Michael Arrington in his latest podcast "something is clearly going on there". So watch this space...
Interview: Can Userplane Help Transform AOL? (0) - Userplane's Michael Jones: "We expect Userplane to have a great influence on the future of AOL's strategy and culture."
DEMOfall 2006 Presenting Companies Announced (0) - DEMO is on this week and Alex Iskold will be providing on-the-scene reports for R/WW.
Top Web Apps in Japan (10) - this is a fascinating post, thanks to the information given to me by Benjamin Joffe (CEO of Plus Eight Star Ltd) and Masashi Kobayashi (partner of Globis Capital Partners - one of the largest Venture Capital firms in Japan). Must read, IMO.
9rules Adds Community Search Engine (0) - a neat example of social search.
3Tera Brings Utility Computing To Web Apps (7) - watch this company, 3Tera. They are building outstanding web technology.
The Social Bookmarking Faceoff (65) - Alex's post got a great deal of attention, so scroll through the comments if social bookmarking is your thing.
France Web Market Overview (19) - another in our popular international web apps series.
Building Web Native Apps: Google Calendar and Web Office (4) - Web Native apps are Google's raison d'etre.
Can Google China compete with Baidu? (8) - check out the comments for some excellent pro and con arguments. Most people do expect Google to compete well, long term, against Baidu in the China market.
For some great weekend reading, check out this Fortune magazine article that gets inside the great Google brain. Some extracts that I enjoyed...
"What emerges from months of interviews with employees ranging from fresh-out-of-college hires to the CEO is that Google firmly believes it has a framework for figuring out the future. It should come as no surprise that the plan is as irreverent, self-confident, and presumptuous as the company itself. Google's executives don't articulate it this way, but the framework can be found in the title of Shona Brown's book: structured chaos. Indeed, along with Googleyness, chaos is among the most important aspects of Google's self-image. Understanding how Google thinks about chaos -- like Page's teachable moment after Sandberg's million-dollar mistake -- is critical to divining where the company goes next. "Are lots of questions hanging out there in the market?" asks Sandberg. "Sure. Because we don't always have an answer. We're willing to tolerate that ambiguity and chaos because that's where the room is for innovation." Good strategy -- if it actually works."
(emphasis mine)
Later in the article it states that Google has released "at least 83 full-fledged and test-stage products", but as yet none have come close to the success of their search and online advertising linchpins.
Google of course has a heck of a lot of smart employees - and they are given the freedom to experiment and innovate. The Fortune article takes a more systemic view of this than previous articles. The Google system is made up of Googleyness and 'structured chaos'.
Another part I liked was the description of Google CEO Eric Schmidt explaining the history and future of computing:
"He draws a series of connected clouds representing the history of the computing industry, from mainframes to minicomputers to PCs to today's mobile devices. The gist of the illustration is that there's practically no money left to be made in computers, not in hardware or software. The money, instead, is all in Web applications, a trend Schmidt had been predicting since his days as chief technology officer at Sun a decade ago. Users won't always be traveling to the Web on the PC, which is why he scribbles lines for cellphones, cable set-top boxes, Treos, BlackBerrys, and so on."
(emphasis mine)
Again, everybody sees and talks about these trends - but it's Google's ability and willingness to act on them which makes them such a compelling Internet company. Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon are that too - but none of them have that ineffable Googleyness :-)
Today is the first OneWebDay, a global
awareness event to "create, maintain, advance and promote a global day to celebrate
online life." It was founded by Susan Crawford, associate professor at the Cardozo School
of Law in New York City. Some big Web names have been lined up in support - including Sir
Tim Berners-Lee and Craig Newmark of craigslist. Virtual celebrations will be held in
Second Life and there will be real-world celebrations around the globe.
I can certainly get behind a message like this:
"The idea behind OneWebDay is to tell the story of how the web changes lives around the world. We're making the web visible so that we don't take it for granted."
Fred Wilson does the Al Gore thing and riffs on the ecology metaphor:
"The web is like planet earth. It's an amazing resource that we need to value, respect, protect, and celebrate."
Even skeptical tech news website The Register gets into the spirit:
"The idea behind OneWebDay is to remember that the web is not just a jumble of machines, but also a social environment."
The About Page of OneWebDay lays out the message in detail:
"The Web is worth celebrating.
OneWebDay is one day a year when we all - everyone around the physical globe - can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities.
As with Earth Day - an inspiration and model for OneWebDay - it’s up to the celebrants to decide how to celebrate. We encourage all celebrations! Collaboration, connection, creativity, freedom.
By the end of the day, the Web should be just a little bit better than it was before, and we’ll be able to see our connection to it more clearly."
Pic: jonasgoldstein
Suggested activities include: Collective art projects (see yourself as a pixel); Music mashups; Contributing to a slide show of flickr images of people doing the onewebday hand signal (see above); Teach your grandmother to blog; Make a website for your club, church, school; Employees: teach your boss to IM; Doctors: Set up web-based self-scheduling for patients.
I'm all for this (well, except maybe the hand signal...). The thought behind it is a great one, so Read/WriteWeb encourages you to get out there and celebrate the Web!
In the clearest sign yet that
the big guns are preparing to step up the battle for Web Office, Microsoft
has said it is considering releasing a version of Microsoft Works (the poor cousin of
Microsoft Office) as a web suite. The desktop version of Works retails for $50 and
includes a calendar, word processor, spreadsheets, Web Browser and e-mail. While its
currently positioned as a home productivity toolset (to do your accounts, write letters,
etc), it could pretty easily be re-positioned as a (small) business web office suite.
In any case - because Works includes basic word processing and spreadsheet software, to web-enable that and bundle it as a suite would be a step above what both Microsoft and Google currently offer. Right now Microsoft has Office Live (web hosting, email, project collaboration) and Google offers Apps For Your Domain (email, IM, calendar and website creator).
Microsoft's planned web-based Works would be a free package, supported by advertising. As Reuters put it:
"[Microsoft] faces a growing pack of Web-based competitors -- led by Google -- that is offering similar [office] technology for free with a business model that makes money off advertising.
The world's largest software maker is now mulling how it can move Microsoft Works, a basic suite of business software that often comes preloaded on inexpensive consumer PCs, onto the Web as part of its growing stable of free online services."
I think
this is a wise move by Microsoft to pre-empt Google's upcoming Web Office suite. It
clearly won't affect sales of their flagship MS Office, as the functionality is much
richer in the desktop version - even more so when Vista and Office 2007 are released.
Works is very basic by comparision - but it does have word processing and
spreadsheets.
On the other hand Google will probably easily trump a web-based Works, once they package up Writely and Google Spreadsheets into a proper suite. So far there have only been hints that Google will take that next step - perhaps they're still busy working on the business models for such a move.
All in all, things are starting to get interesting in the Web Office space. I wouldn't mind betting that Google pushes forward whatever secret plan they have for a full office suite, now that Microsoft has made noises about webifying word processing and spreadsheets.
See also: Google Office: a close-up look and image gallery of Google office apps.
We've seen a lot of action in the 'personalized start page' space on the consumer side, but relatively little development in business web 'start pages'. Salesforce.com has an interesting feature in its upcoming Winter '07 release that may change that. Called the Business Web Desktop, it's basically an Ajax-powered web homepage for Salesforce apps.
The applications accessible on Business Web Desktop will include: activities, opportunities, leads, campaigns, other objects (including custom objects). The idea of this "customized desktop" is to provide all the information business people need on a single screen. The user interface relies heavily on a dynamic Ajax interface. Other features include multiple panes, data refresh in each pane occurring when data changes, and dynamic lists that expand as the user mouses over them.
Because this is for enterprise, there is a certain amount of control maintained by the IT dept. Admins will configure the page layouts and mini page layouts and assign users to profiles and record types. Users can however set up their own list views.
There has been some discussion on whether this Business Web Desktop will replace the salesforce.com "home tab" in the service. That won't happen in the Winter '07 release, but possibly in future:
"In the Winter release, we will be adding the Console as a separate Tab, it will not replace the Home tab, but that has been discussed."
We've written before about 'personalized start pages' being a great option for company dashboards or even intranet homepages. So good to see this is turning into reality, care of Salesforce.com. Winter '07 is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter. Here are some initial screenshots - a bit blurry, but they are the only ones currently available...
See also: Salesforce.com previews Analytics and Dashboard Mash-Ups
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus.
With all this buzz around the potential Yahoo! acqusition of Facebook for $1Billion, we think it's time to do the social networking faceoff.
Arguably of all services in the new social era, the social network sites hold most promise. The reason for this is that these community-driven sites have the ability to leverage their user base across other social web verticals. For example Facebook is also a photosharing service, MySpace is also a music sharing service and LinkedIn is a vertical search engine for Jobs. So the stakes in the social networking game are much higher. Naturally then, the social networking space has received major attention from premier venture capitalists. Please refer to our Web VC Chart post, where we we worked out the portfolios and sizes of the investments in this space.
Another natural trend that we are seeing in the space is demographic segmentation. Most social networks target a segment of the population - either explicitly as part of their business plan, or as a byproduct of the rules of network formation. LinkedIn is focused on Business Professionals, Facebook is focused on college students (although it has ambitions to go into the business space), while MySpace targets teenagers, college students, music and hip culture.
In addition to those three, Bebo is making some major waves and has surpassed MySpace in UK and New Zealand. Bebo's focus is quite similar to MySpace, although the pages are not as chaotic. And now there is also an interesting twist in the whole social networking space - the trailing and tired Friendster recently was awarded a patent on some key ideas used in all social networking sites. Knowing that Kleiner Perkins is behind the company, we can expect some moving and shaking soon.
Bebo |
 Friendster |
MySpace |
TagWorld |
Orkut |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Estimated Active Users |
25M+ 1.9M (*) |
7M (*) | 5.8M (*) | 1.5 (*) | 70M+ |
1M 0.9M (*) |
49M (*) |
| Alexa rank | 268 | 71 | 40 | 219 | 6 | 2,373 | 16 |
| Alexa daily views (Per million) |
475 | 1,800 | 1,500 | 380 | 18,000 | 22 | 12,500 |
| Google blogsearch links |
3,700 | 7,000 | 18,600 | 5,900 | 401,000 | 3,500 | 32,000 |
| Focus | Teenagers/ college students |
College students | Anyone | Business | Teenagers/ college students |
Teenagers/ college students |
Anyone |
| Classifieds | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Events | X | X | |||||
| Groups | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Messages | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| Music | X | X | X | X | |||
| Photos | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| Services | X | ||||||
| Video | X | X | X | X | |||
| Clean Design |
X | X | X | ||||
| API | X | ||||||
| Widgets | X | X |
(*) The active user estimate is based on the assumption that MySpace has 70M users. We then used Alexa daily pageviews number to estimate the number of active users for other social networking sites. Note that the number for TagWorld agrees with the number given by TechCrunch in March of 2006. This is not surprising since it appears that the traffic for TagWorld had been on decline. On the other hand there is a big descrepancy in Bebo's value. This can be attributed to either inaccuracy of Alexa data outside of US or inactivity of Bebo users. Note that TechCrunch gave the number of registered users, while we estimate the active users. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
We can gain additional insights by looking at the traffic dynamics over the past year. Alexaholic only allows 5 sites to be compared at once, so we had to make 2 charts. Note that LinkedIn appears in both to help correlate them.
From the charts we clearly see that Orkut is gaining, but why? The feature set and the user interface are not impressive. The answer has to be its affiliation with Google, but we found another interesting chart, within Orkut itself:
But perhaps it is not just that Brazilian users dominate, but also the attitude and confidence of Orkut. Here is a paragraph from Orkut's about page:
MySpace is an undisputed leader on all counts, but Orkut is on the rise and it's moving very rapidly. Facebook is in excellent shape - hence the interest from Yahoo!. It'll be interesting to watch if LinkedIn expands its user base and offering. At this point, TagWorld looks shaky, while Bebo does not look as strong as it has been portrayed recently. And the old timer Friendster is not out of the game yet - it's doing just fine. All and all it looks like the battle for the gold (MySpace, Orkut) and for the bronze (the others) is going to heat up.
The WSJ is reporting that US Social Networking site Facebook is in serious talks to sell itself to Yahoo, for an amount that may be as high as $1 billion. According to the WSJ, this is a return to the acquisition talks which Facebook has held over the past year with Yahoo - as well as Microsoft and Viacom.
If this deal goes through (and strange it should follow this week's news of Yahoo's online advertising woes and subsequent stock price drop), then most likely it will top News Corp's acquisition of MySpace last year for $580M. And it'll be more proof that social networking sites are seen as prime online advertising fodder for new media and technology companies. Note that last month Viacom was rumored to be after UK SNS sensation Bebo.
The WSJ article is behind a paywall, but here is the link. Thanks Honor Gunday for the tip.
