Category Archives: internet

Microsoft LIVEs!

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Paul Graham is ridiculously suggesting that “Microsoft is Dead“.

I remember back in the 90’s when many where suggesting how IBM was dead, and how obvious it was that the Apples and Microsofts and clever upstarts would make IBM obsolete.

As this chart shows IBM has thrived since that time, and though they hardly make the news much anymore it’s very important to note that IBM is a bigger company (measured by capitalization) than the following “big winners”: Google, Apple, Yahoo.

Also notable is the fact that what is probably the best search algorithm in the world belongs to … IBM. It’s called “WebFountain”. It’s not scalable and therefore not an alternative to Google at this time, but one can’t even count IBM out of the *search wars*, let alone Microsoft.

Microsoft isn’t dead. Not even close. Of course it is suffering from the inertia that naturally springs from huge success and dominance, but like IBM it will find new markets, new niches, and will benefit (eventually) from the innovations of it’s competitors as they were able to benefit – hugely – from Microsoft innovations (e.g. free internet browser software on all PCs).

Don Dodge corrects the foolishness, and Tony is right to suggest that MS has plenty of life left.

It’s even possible that Microsoft will win the big game. With the LIVE project, Microsoft’s neural network approach to search may be more advanced than Google’s and although search result quality continues to lag Google’s by a notch it’s simply not clear how search will evolve over the next few years.

Fixed mindset vs Growth mindset = Microsoft mindset vs Google mindset?

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Google’s legendary success, especially in light of Microsoft’s lackluster performance, leads one to wonder about the differences at these two techno behemoths.

Stanford Magazine has a nice feature on the work of Carol Dweck on personal achievement. Here is a summary of the work in a single diagram.

Perhaps the big difference between Google and Microsoft is that the Google culture inspires what Dweck calls a “Growth Mindset”, which the MS culture inspires the “fixed mindset”.

Supporting this model is the idea that where MS seems to ignore criticism Google often embraces it. Also, Google remains open to change – flexible – while Microsoft seems to resist change or even force square pegs into round holes with bloated or “bad fit” applications. For Google, the modifications to the world view are reflected in Google products. This leads to the simpler, more friendly technologies Google is known for.

Meanwhile the MS products rely more on their virtual OS monopoly, big businesses reluctance to change, and their sheer size which allows them to move the market.

Where does Yahoo fit in all this? (disclaimer – I have Yahoo stock) . I think they are the sleeper here, with a culture and people that have the potential to adopt the growth mindset but are currently stymied by market forces and the Google glow.

Related:  Scoble today bashes his ex, Microsoft, for talking BS before action.

To Twitter or not to Twitter

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Thanks to Pete Cashmore for answering my question about wazzup with Twitter, the new and skyrocketing-in-popularity social networking tool that really does not seem to make much sense … unless … you want to throw out little tidbits to friends and to the world every so often and see what others are doing or thinking about. Pete calls this “talking about your cat” and I think he’s hit the nail on the head. Most of us, as humans, like some attention, and bloggers are usually hungry to interact with as many people as possible, superficiality be damned. Enter Twitter, which allows you to follow friends or the Twitterers at large who are throwing out a little piece of their life every so often. Unlike long, often boring or repetitive blog postings the twitter stuff is a quick look into the lives of others, and that’s always a fun thing even if they are having a boring life/day/twitter posting.

I’ve been playing with Twitter for the past day and although I’m not hooked (yet?) I can understand why this is taking off in the digital community so fast. In fact I’ve already made friends with John Edwards, Presidential Candidate dude. That’s pretty neat, right?

Twitter also has another thing going for it – founder Evan Williams also brought Blogger.com to fruition as a Google buyout, and as such was one of those who really helped bring blogging to the mainstream as a simple way to share.

I’m not even sure I understand what Ross Mayfield is saying about Twitter Tipping the Tuna, but it’s a nice alliteration. Perhaps he’s suggesting it’ll be a flash in the pan after initial surge of adoption? That’s possible, but I think Twitter’s got a long life ahead, though not sure if that’s good for the world or just another goofy internet thing to keep uninspired levels of productivity … as high as possible.

Global community spirit

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Over at Techmeme I’m struck by three stories that nicely showcase the importance of *community* to dot commers and to the expanding online universe.

The most interesting is that Yahoo Answers is going social, offering social networking as part of the answers concept.  I was bullish on Yahoo Answers a year ago and it appears they’ve done a great job at growing this project.   Incredibly the number of answers users is comparable to the number of Myspace people. This is not entirely apples to apples comparison because I’m guessing the Myspacers spend a lot more time online at Myspace, but if Answers can get the community ball rolling there is huge potential to become something of a “thinking persons” (or at least a “questioning person’s”?) Myspace.

The second item is Kevin Rose reporting that Digg has a *million* users. That is quite a milestone (though a long way from the approximately 60-100 million users claimed by Yahoo Answers and Myspace. I’ve never really understood the appeal of Digg as more than a superficial way to identify oddball news, feeling that dedicated diggers tend to prefer goofy stories rather than substantive ones, but the concept is brilliant and provocative.

Third, and perhaps most significant, is SONY’s Playstation 3 virtual world that launches this spring. Critics are raving about SONY’s brave new world, some suggesting it’s superior to the top virtual world “Second Life” which suffers from technical complexity, a steep learning curve, and a lot of skeptics who think second lifers are just escaping their first lives. It seems to me the Playstation world could become the “Myspace” of virtual worlds and captivate the teen crowd that already is practically living online ( WI or XBOX could also get smart super fast and get their own virtual world going. Both appear to be on the road for more widespread adoption as gaming systems than Sony’s PS3, though this can all change quickly).

WordPress blog = open ID. Brilliant!

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Matt M, Simon, and the WordPress gang strike again with a simple yet extremely intuitive and useful solution to OpenID challenges. They are allowing WP blogs to pass ID info to other applications. For the WordPress gang I guess it’s just another day at the office but this really is a great development that will help a lot of folks who don’t want to hear about standards and technical issues and just want a simple solution to online ID issues. Other applications are doing this as well, which will make the OpenID transition a lot easier.

This seems so simple compared to the recent developments with Yahoo’s BBAuth and other OpenID approaches – I think these have focused heavily on ways for developers to build on, for example,Yahoo’s ID and bring it into applications. Good, but better to first establish a bunch of simple OpenID implementations for people’s Google, Yahoo, blog info.

I would like Yahoo to just establish a simple system like WP has that allows me to authorize Yahoo to release my Yahoo info to others as I’m doing with the WP solution. (did they do this and I missed it?).

I think we may all be surprised how registrations have been more of a barrier to entry than it would seem they should be by just requiring a few minutes of sign up. It’s a brave new world of short attention spans and attention deficits and as OpenID becomes ubiquitous and easy we can roam the wild online range even more quickly and superficially than before.

OpenID info at Word Press 

Sex, lies, videotape, and Wikipedia

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Wikipedia‘s latest mini scandal involves an editor “essjay”, real name Ryan Jordan, who faked some academic credentials both in his Wikipedia work and in an interview with New York Magazine. After considerable debate over the issue Jordan has resigned from his (high level) volunteer Wikipedia work and his new, paid position at Wikia.

New York Magazine conspicuously failed to find the deception in their fact checking, leading some critics to suggest this episode is best seen as an example of how mainstream media fails to get the story right even while complaining about internet inaccuracies. Others focus on this as yet another example of how the internet space is filled with deception, even in what is arguably the most authoritative encyclopedia ever developed – Wikipedia. A recent study compared the accuracy of Encyclopedia Britannica to Wikipedia and concluded they were roughly equivalent in accuracy. Wikipedia’s much greater depth of coverage means that it “wins” in my book, and I noted the other day that I have not cracked open any of the volumes of my Encyclopedia Brittanica in years.

Nicholas Carr has a thoughtful post about the mini-wiki-scandal. Unfortunately I think many other onliners reflecting on this the analysis, including founder Jimmy Wales, are talking the point of view of “insiders” who are very sympathetic about the nuances of how online identities and anonymity have become accepted aspects – some would say necessary parts – of the online experience.

Active Wikipedia folks seem to have nothing but glowing praise for Jordan’s substantial contributions to the project and don’t seem very interested in the deception issues, which itself is very interesting since Wikipedia prides itself on seeking unvarnished intellectual integrity. Apparently insiders are allowed quite a bit of varnish? Where will these people draw the lines on truth? A very slippery slope in my opinion, and in general I object to the notion that anonymity serves the community well – on the contrary it’s generally harmful and unnecessary and in cases like this provides detractors with a lot of ammunition to shoot down the idea that the wisdom of crowds is superior to the wisdom of “experts”.

This despite the fact you could suggest that what is remarkable here is that Wikipedia is so very accurate *in spite of* the many deceptions. This suggests that accuracy can spring from the wisdom of the crowds even when that crowd may be engaging – at an individual level – in deceptive behavior.

I think mom, pop, and most outsiders will view this in simpler terms and see it as yet another indication that “the internet can’t be trusted”. This is unfortunate because 1) the right decision was made here – Jordan resigned. 2) Wiki is very authoritative in many areas. Like many onliners I turn first to Wikipedia for many research topics, always cautious about accepting it as the last word but generally pleased at how well it stands up for many topics as a quick and accurate introduction.

I love Wikipedia as an info source but think the “moral” of this story is that the new web ethic – one that suggests it’s fine to practice various forms of personal deception as long as you don’t send spam emails or bother other online insiders, is very misplaced. I strongly get the idea from Wales and others that “being part of the team” is more important than being straightforward. I see this ethic in some of the activity I’ve observed in Silicon Valley as well. As an “insider” at conferences folks will share information about all kinds of deceptive stuff they’ve done online. The extension of these new Web 2.0 ethical standard creates a world of hidden identities, personal deceptions, and many avenues for illegal and unethical online activity.

As for me I’d just like the old conventional handshake and honest talk morality back, and make that ASAP if you please.

Social networks = people, not technologies

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The New York Times reports that Cisco has acquired Tribe Networks in what appears to be an effort to become a player in the social networking space.     The article quotes Marc Andreeson of NING, another social network facilitator, suggesting that the social networking biz is harder than it looks and Cisco will have problems.    I agree Cisco will probably fail to do much with this but not for the same reason, but for the opposite.   As with most internet stuff the technology difficulties are much less of a challenge than the social barriers to success.

Even Yahoo and Google – now brilliant masterpieces of technological sophistication – did not start out that way.     Rather they began as fairly modest “websites” with a handful of programming routines  that grew in usefulness, traffic, and complexity to become the internet behemoths they are today.   Sure there’s a lot of amazing technology behind these companies, but I still think there is a sort of “techno bias” that remains pervasive both inside and outside the industy that is both fooling and manipulating people into thinking that success is mostly a function of your technology when it should be clear to all that it’s a function of the way your online environments relate to people, and that in turn is art not science.    Is expensive, complex technology required to create a hugely popular, high traffic website?   Of course NOT.   Myspace and Facebook now use slick stuff, but they didn’t start out that way.   PlentyofFish.com, a hugely popular dating site, still uses a *single* server and very basic technology despite the fact that it competes with big players working on platforms that probably cost 100x that of PlentyofFish’s.

I think the future will be like the past – successful sites will cater to the needs of people and bend the technologies as needed.   Cisco, Ning, and other social networking technology platforms are great but they won’t define things.   People will do that.   People are, after all, what social networking is all about.

Polish Poets to Google: A domain by any other name won’t smell … as sweet.

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A group of Polish Poets are holding out their gmail.pl domain name from the Google legal juggernaut. I’m torn between 1) seeing this for what it most likely is, where the poets saw a great opportunity to nab a name that would become a key part of the Google Mail branding strategy and did it and 2) the more entertaining view which is that “do no evil” Google is bulldozing poetry websites to make way for gmail parking lots.

Obviously the best way to resolve such disputes is a poetry contest. I submit this entry:

The Polish Poets, silently
Sat on their small domain

Then mighty Google shouted
“ON YOUR PARADE, WE SHALL REIGN!”

Na zdrowie! Said the poets, raising high a glass of beer
This ain’t no joke, solemny spoke, the Google legal tier

“But we all think it’s funny”, said a thousand blogging fools

Get off your Google ass
Give them some Google cash
And call it all … just … cool

——

Meanwhile, back at the Plex, Google says “Good relationships are built on good communication”. Heh – as long as you don’t use any POETRY!

Phil’s got more and a fine choice of title.

Google News? Not!

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Today’s big news is that Google is not allowed to put out the news from a European news outlet that sued them. As usual, silicon insiders are 1) waxing argumentatively in favor of the virtuous wonder of Google and 2) forgetting the big picture which is *long term content control*. Here is the story, and here’s an example of the siliconized logic from TechDirt. Here’s Google’s view on the case.

Of course it’s probably stupid and shortsighted for the Belgian newspapers to insist Google remove them because they’ll lose reach and they’ll lose some potential for advertising revenues. This is especially true for an American audience that, without online exposure, is far more likely to encounter a Belgian waffle than a Belgian newpaper.

However, the news flash that Silicon Valley is always so reluctant to read is that Google’s spectacular success has not been primarily a function of *Google’s* own efforts, rather it has been their brilliance monetizing *other people’s content*. Google, as they themselves are fond of reminding us, does not do content. That’s fine and even appreciated by those of us who do do content. [Hmm – I said do do as in “Yes, I doo doo content” said Chico the Wonder Dog].

However the key question about content remains – how should content cash be divided between those who produce it, those who monetize it, and those who expose it to the world? Google can reasonable suggest that they are now doing much of the monetizing and the exposure and therefore deserve most of the cash. That fits well with the fact they are *getting* most of the cash. Google might also note that they are providing publishers with adsense program and then sharing about 70% of that revenue with the content producers themselves.

On the other hand, Belgium papers or other content providers can reasonably argue that when Google pulls up snips of their stuff and shows them in Google search results page, and the a user winds up clicking an advertisement at the side, the content folks don’t see a dime of that even though they were a key contributor to the Google profit equation.

Who is right? I say let the market decide.