Pernicious Revolution

Post-blog

Fri, 30 May 2003 22:23:08 GMT

Rupert Goodwins over at ZDNet is covering a media revolution happening not in the US or Europe, but in Asia. South Korea--which counts among its achievements being one of the highest percentage of broadband users in the world--has for 4 years been sucessfully experimenting with it's own form of post-media. Even better than the blogs--which allow anyone with a browser and an Internet connection to publish--OhmyNews has a regular staff of journalists who cull stories submitted by average folk, publishing a large percentage of them online and in the weekly print edition. The core staff augments contributions with articles of their own, but the topics of interest and the significant leads often come from the ordinary people on the street who happened to send in a story. And as Mr. Goodwins points out, OhymyNews doesn't "abdicate the important editorial principle of filtering and ranking the news--somewhere that other online quasi-journalistic phenomena such as blogs fall down."

What if we could do e-mail better?

Thu, 29 May 2003 02:09:39 GMT

What would we do?

We'd want verifiable identities; if I get a message from you, I want to be sure it's you--and if can't verify I know you, you're probably spamming me
We'd encrypt everything; what we communicate is no one else's business. Funny, if e-mail had always been secure, would we have bothered with web-based e-commerce?
We'd add guaranteed delivery; if I send you something, I'd want to feel comfortable eventually you'd see it
We'd make it a little less tied to one host; you move from work to home to beach house--stuff should just get to you, wherever you are, whatever computers you have
A little ad-hoc structure would be nice; sometimes a mess of words just aren't enough

Food for thought

When devices recognize one another: the real use for wireless p2p

Thu, 29 May 2003 00:08:48 GMT

This is where devices become interesting: when they begin to recognize one another, through WiFi, and understand the role each one plays for the end-user. Will we eventually have to go through a "bonding" process with our devices, so that when we take them out into the world they still act for us--and are not unnecessarily distracted by everyone else's devices?

The increasing risk of large IP

Wed, 28 May 2003 10:53:42 GMT

The days of the massive shrink-wrapped software product are over. Yeah, yeah, we've known that since Netscape offered their browser for download. It's not just because electronic delivery is now the norm, but the market moves too fast for a vendor to invest so heavily in proprietary IP--there's too much of a risk that they'll never get sufficient ROI on that IP. This doesn't mean the end of proprietary IP, just that it needs to be delivered in smaller chunks--or perhaps given away, as part of the value delivered within an overall service. The takeaway? Those who bank their business on large amounts of IP will just see their investment depreciate--quicker and quicker.

The end of employment

Tue, 27 May 2003 23:54:49 GMT

Technology has now made it possible for suppliers to compete against employees; that is, employees--which once had a monopoly on the internal services needed by a company--now are discovering that they are competing with the marketplace for their very jobs. What they do can be outsourced to another company cheaper and quicker than if they did it themselves. IT is one of the first under attack; HR next. So, technologies that accelerate that trend will be most effective in the marketplace.

Rules rule

Tue, 27 May 2003 10:25:08 GMT

Just have to point out: somebody else is thinking about what could come after object-oriented programming, and they see rule-based languages, too. Check out Jon Udell's insight into the current crop of tools for rule processing.

I switched

Sat, 17 May 2003 18:18:44 GMT

Well I've successfully moved to my new PowerBook! Mac's rule; I always knew they were for artists, but I had no idea how perfect they are for geeks, too. And, of course, my Radio blog translated perfectly to the new machine...

Customers of software vendors adopting simpler mindsight

Thu, 31 Oct 2002 17:43:07 GMT

A great insight in an article about Microsoft's new Jupiter platform.

Wascha said he and his team have been meeting with CIOs all across the world about the future of .Net and enterprise infrastructure, and their talks "all boil down to a couple of things that aren't shocking," he said. "Customers are extremely frustrated by software right now. It is too complex and it is too expensive. Software gets sold to customers in the way that vendors think about solving problems, not in a way that benefits the customer. Companies are becoming extremely savvy, they want less complex, less expensive solutions."

Huge words of wisdom in those 2 sentences. After a decade of dominance by large software houses selling enormous, complex products--could htere be room for the little guy again?

Commoditization of software

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 18:15:50 GMT

Great quote from a Gartner analyst regarding the upcoming MS Office 11, which has heavier support for XML:

Microsoft needs "to make Office less of a commodity," said Gartner analyst Michael Silver. "People think they can come in with StarOffice and replace Office because all they're getting is commodity word processing and a spreadsheet (through Office)."

Software is becoming a commodity; the rise of the Internet has fueled the information-sharing and collaboration necessary to make Open Source succeed. Any moderately-successful software product over time can and will have an Open Source near-replacement.

Mon, 01 Jul 2002 17:08:06 GMT

Not a widely noted article, this one points out that OpenOffice.org is looking for a P2P technology to relieve the stress on their file distribution servers. Lots of room left in the P2P space, I'd say.

Mon, 01 Jul 2002 15:12:24 GMT

OpenDJ UNIX-based P2P Streamer [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters] is yet another example of how P2P technologies can change the paradigm of ordinary applications. Great discussion on this one, too, with some comments suggesting ideas that the OpenDJ hadn't considered, but found intriguing to consider.