Category Archives: Science & Technology

MIX06: Leaving Las Vegas

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Everybody understands that the web is redefining computing and communication.   Some companies are ACTING like the web is profoundly important more than others.   Yahoo is and Google is and certainly the exploding number of Web 2.0 startups “get Web 2.0”.

MIX06 was Microsoft’s first major attempt to reach out and interract with a broad section of online community with this in mind.
So for me the question was “Does Microsoft get Web 2.0?”.    The answer was not so clear to me.  The LIVE team certainly does, and they’ve got something like a billion behind them and a lot of moral support from the key people like Bill Gates.   They’ve got good applications and ideas and a lot more coming over the next few months.
But the core competencies and resources and focus (though NOT the key energy) still make me feel like Microsoft as a community has not fundamentally adapted to the new web, and maybe cannot adapt.   Google’s success is about the web’s success.  Microsoft’s success has NOT been web centric and changing the company to a web centric model is risky at best and could be disastrous.

Ironically I’m not sure they have to become web centric even though they seem to say they do, because with upcoming changes to IE and VISTA they have a lot of control over the environment in which Web 2.0 will unfold.

So, I’m leaving Las Vegas a bit more enlightened but with no great insight into the emerging world of the web.

MIX06 + 1 Googler

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I was WRONG that there were zero people from Google here at MIX06. I just met Patrick with their Adwords API. Excellent guy. He didn’t know of any OTHER Google folks here though.  Hey Microsoft – having a Web 2.0 event with so little Google participation …is…. just … wrong.

MIX06: Amazon as Web 2.0 butt kicker

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Jeff Barr, Amazon’s Evangelist, is about to show how to use Alexa’s API and search services to build your own search engine.   I’ve written about this before and like John Battelle I think the implications of Amazon’s many clever, cheap, and hugely customizable routines has yet to sink in even among many in the development community.    In one sense Amazon is bringing the price point on advanced development way, way down.

Jeff just noted how his kids didn’t recognize a dial up modem sound and I’m thinking some of the people here at the conference probably don’t even remember such things now that all but the most backward university would have broadband almost everywhere.

MIX06: Day 3. Where IS everybody?

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Hey, if I can get up early anybody can.   The RSS session just ended and I’m encouraged by what look like excellent RSS aggregation features coming.    But as with many things here it’s not clear exactly when and where.    I’ve had a chance to play on some machines with the OS Longhorn
wait…I mean Avalon  No – VISTA!     Even the MS people here are sometimes using the wrong name for it.   Note to those who hire marketeers to rework the obvious into the obscure – SAVE YOUR MONEY!

I like the look and feel but on the 3 or 4 machines I’ve used there’s a sort of small performance lag that makes VISTA with IE7 feel clunky.   Connectivity here is just fair but I don’t think that was the problem.  I’m hoping this will be corrected with coming performance tweaks and that it’s not due to what I understand is VISTA’s massive use of  system resources.

I’m seeing a difference again in that MS is planning for the media rich / entertainment centric world where a lot of web development, especially at Google, seems focused more on speed and simplicity.  I *definitely* think much of Microsoft is underestimating the importance of delivering online information and experiences with utmost speed and simplicity, though I think the LIVE team is really “getting it” about this and other aspects of the evolving internet ecosystem.  But I think the LIVE folks are the new kids on the Redmond block, so I wonder if they’ll be cut loose to do what needs to be done?
MIX06 poster, Las Vegas

Myspace at MIX06. CTO Witcomb “We’re hiring!”

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MIX06 threw a nice party at the Venetian’s “V” bar last night.   I enjoyed meeting Abner Witcomb who is the myspace CTO and a very personable fellow as well.  They are planning a LOT of hires and he was asking folks to send along any good prospects to him or the recruiting team.

I did get a chance to ask about filtering and content issues but I want to digest his answer a bit more because I think this topic is very complex.  I was surprised to learn that EVERY submitted picture is reviewed by a human because the porn filters simply can’t catch everything, and they see this review as essential quality control, especially since advertisers do not want association with porn.
WitcombJoe

Here in Vegas there seems to be a rule on club and bar coolness that says you try to use no more than four letters in the name.  Top clubs are PURE (Caesar’s Palace) where Yahoo had a nice party back at November’s Webmasterworld  and TAO (Venetian) where Microsoft picked up the tab on Monday for food and drinks.  TAO actually bills itself as a “Religious” nightlife experience …. sheesh…only in Las Vegas.

Web 2.0 at MIX06. Mike to Yellow Pages “You are DEAD!”

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You couldn’t have picked a better panel for Web 2.0 than here at MIX06. Tim O’Reilly, who was/is the closest thing to Mr. Web 2.0 until perhaps Michael Arrington who was also on the panel along with Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo, Royal Faros of Microsoft’s new messenger initiatives (which look really neat), and Ebay’s Adam Trachtenberg.

Of course as with all things Web 2.0 one left more confused than before the session, but that goes with the territory these days. Monetization is unclear even for companies that are cited as “successes” in the space such as delicious and flickr.

My favorite quote of the conference was Arrington to the Canadian Yellow Pages company asking how they could morph into a 2.0 company. “You are dead!” he said, I think meaning that UNLESS they changed their old style, usurous advertising fees, yellow page publishing empire would be overrun by Web 2.0s. He even felt EBAY was at risk, feeling they are protective of their 1.0 status.
I’m not so sure about that – in fact I’m increasingly skeptical of Web 2.0 as an easily monetizable phenomenon even as I am more convinced than ever that it’s a profound change in communication, information, and global community.

Mix06 = Web 1.9

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OK I’m starting to grok the conference and the MS role in 2.0 …. maybe….. I got a chance to ask Tim O’Reilly to help me interpret Bill Gates’ answers to Tim’s excellent questions to Bill at this morning’s keynote. Most important to me was this simple question:
“Does Microsoft ‘get’ Web 2.0?”.

“parts of it…” was Tim’s excellent summary of the situation I see unfolding before me here at MIX.

I’m seeing good stuff – maybe some great stuff once I have a chance to play with some of the new applications like ATLAS and Windows Presentation Foundation – and I’m seeing enthusiastic MS folks who know they must come up with great aps and must overcome the Google “coolness” challenge in the developer community, but I’m not feeling anything like the energy at Mashup Camp where developers were simply on fire with new ideas that embraced the new Web with the excitement of the early years when the internet wasn’t about money, it was about … profound innovation and change.

So this is Web 1.9, and if I were an MS shareholder I think I’d be OK with that. The path to Web 2.0 riches is VERY unclear.

$100 Laptops Rock. Bill’s wrong. But the Gates Foundation still rules.

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I was sorry to see Bill Gates bashing MIT’s $100 Laptop project

Gates’ credentials as an advocate for the developing world are unsurpassed, but I’d guess he’s reacting more to the fact this is a Google sponsored project than legitimate concerns about it’s viability.

I love the $100 Laptop Project not so much because it will bring tech to the poor, especially children (though it will do that), but because it will help to rapidly and aggressively break down what I see as the key barrier to development which is the lack of communication and exchange between “them” and “us”.

A dictator’s tyranny or a famine in Nigeria will take on a whole new relevance when THEIR kids are all playing video games and instant messaging with OUR kids.

Bill, you got this one wrong, dawg. But the Gates Foundation remains the world’s most heroic development effort.

Leaving Las Vegas?

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A great movie but a bad choice to watch last night was “Leaving Las Vegas”.  I’d seen it long ago and again was mesmerized by simply brilliant performances by Nick Cage, for which he won the Oscar, and Elizabeth Shue, who was nominated. But this is one of the most depressing films of all time.  I also learned that the writer of the book on which this movie is based – a loosely autobiographical account of the destructiveness of alcoholism – killed himself about 2 weeks into the production of the film. 

My problem with this?  I’m off to Vegas in a few days for the MIX06 conference. MIX06 is Microsoft’s effort to gain some traction in the growing mashup/Web 2.0 space.  It’s at the splendid Venetian Hotel and I’d rather be marvelling at the architectural extravagances and enjoying the huge MS party at “TAO” than worrying about how many of the people walking the street are doomed to untimely and lonely deaths at the hands of their obsessions.

 

Time gets Web 2.0

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Time Magazine notes:

From politics to movie-making, from NASA to NASCAR, exciting new changes are occurring — and so is the very process of innovation. For one thing, corporations and universities no longer dominate the world of new ideas. Instead, we’re living in an age of individual innovation spurred on by the Internet as well as a form of group project best represented by resources like Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that is edited by the masses instead of an elite cadre of professional editors.

I like it.  I’m big on the implications of the explosive growth of global online communities, the programmable web and all the other cool things that happen when the notion of social and corporate networking is extended to an increasingly robust global information network (aka “the internet”).

How the money will flow in this brave new networked world extravaganza is less clear than how the information and innovation will flow.   Wall street still views and invests as if heavily capitalized, large corporations will dominate the landscape for some time, though they are again warming up to the idea that little companies can make a big difference.  Myspace.com’s 580 million valuation and Skype’s even higher number give even the humblest small biz programming people cause to work a bit harder to find “the next big thing”.