Category Archives: Technology

Facebook looks to change the game…again

Posted by joel on July 19, 2007 No comments

FacebookSo, I already blogged about Facebook’s Platform and how it will generate new business models and economies on the web. But today brought news of Facebook’s future plans to change the face of the Internet altogether with an online operating system. Facebook, in their first corporate acquisition, bought Parakey, makers of an online OS that is still under wraps.

We’ve been hearing rumors of an “online operating system” for years now, mostly in the context of Google acquisitions, but this is the first time we’ve heard it from a major social network. What exactly is an online operating system, you ask? Well, the definitions vary, but from what is known about Parakey, it looks like they will allow users to do a variety of unique things.

The most important functionality this presents is the ability to directly access files on your hard drive from within a web application. This would let you edit documents, photos, and movies from your hard drive using a web-based application (no more buying and installing software?), and then you can publish your work directly to the web (or your Facebook profile) with a click or two – the software takes care of moving the file from your hard drive to a web server, and it synchronizes the files on your hard drive with your files on the web. It’s possible that the platform would be open as well (it seems like Facebook’s style), allowing other companies to build applications for the online OS, so you could choose which one you wanted to use to write your documents, mix your MP3s, edit your baby videos, etc. etc.

If any upcoming technological development has the capacity to bring user-publishing and user-generated content to the masses, it’s this. Of course its success will depend on the execution and the actual ease of use, but this technology, plugged into a social network that already counts as members a huge number of the people in a demographic that is likely to be interested in publishing their own content, has the potential to revolutionize how we use the web.

For those of us who are already savvy enough to publish our photos and movies to the web, this could offer a different paradigm shift. I blogged a while back about my orgasmic scenario of not having to rely on my home computer and its hard drive, and of keeping all my files online (with automatic backups) so that I could access my MP3s, my movies, and my documents, from any device, at any time. An online OS takes this model one step further – not only can I access my files from anywhere, but I can work with them – I can view them, edit them, and share them – from any device that supports the online OS, be it my computer, a computer in a library, a kiosk at the airport, my Xbox or PS3, or potentially even my phone. Then we would be able to truly unplug. What would be better than that?

Facebook changes the game

Posted by joel on June 21, 2007 1 comment

If you’re up-to-date in the tech industry, you’ve surely heard of the new Facebook Platform. It’s already been covered pretty extensively, so I won’t belabor the point except to say that I believe this is a turning point in the evolution of the Internet. It’s a brilliant move by the developers at Facebook. And if you’ve read much of my blog, you know this sort of praise is rare.

I now understand why Facebook didn’t sell to Yahoo for the $1B or $2B pricetags we’ve been hearing about. At the time, I thought they were either fools or arrogant not to sell for such a rich price, but they knew that this Platform was coming. They knew they had something special up their sleeve. Now that I’ve seen the Platform, I realize they would have been fools to sell to Yahoo before releasing it. They’ll surely be worth 5-10 times more in the next year or two, and will pose a real threat to MySpace.

Now that the Platform is public, Facebook has a community of hundreds and soon to be thousands of developers making their site better every day. A new marketplace is going to spring up around Facebook, much the way MySpace ushered in the age of widgets and Everquest popularized the exchange and auction of digital goods. It will give life to companies that create products for them, just like MySpace enabled YouTube to grow exponentially.

It isn’t often a paradigm shift happens overnight, but that’s exactly what the Facebook Platform has done. Most paradigm shifts happen gradually as a phenomenon grows to become dominant (AltaVista, Yahoo, MySpace, Google, Everquest, World of Warcraft), but this one is happening in the blink of an eye. Don’t blink.

Top 10 signs that Bubble 2.0 is here

Posted by joel on September 19, 2006 No comments

Six years ago, those of us in the Internet industry saw a massive collapse. It was created by a huge influx of money into any company with a .com in its name as VCs hoped to take companies public based on their number of users and brand awareness rather than their basic business fundamentals. This was the Bubble.

The Bubble, of course, burst in 2000, as the companies that weren’t lucky enough to IPO were abandoned by their respective VCs, so they could no longer make payroll and had to lay off thousands of tech workers, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area.

And now, six years later, we’re in Bubble 2.0. The VCs are back, the money is back, the jobs are back, and the baseless valuations are back. How do I know it’s here?  10 simple reasons:

  1. There are 50 video sharing sites. How many do you need?
  2. Venture capital investing is at its highest level (in dollars and number of deals) since 2002. In Bubble 1.0, this was exactly what happened. The VCs poured as much money as they could into companies to make them grow, so they could try to take them public, cash out, and move on. Companies back then were valued by the number of users they had, so any site with a lot of users could go public, whether they made money or not. (Webvan.com, Kozmo.com, etc.) The big difference this time around is that VCs aren’t trying to take companies public because the public and investors are still gun-shy after having been burned in 2000, so now the VCs are just trying to sell the companies they create to larger companies. Not a bad plan, as long as you can find a larger company that thinks you’re worth it.
  3. Wikipedia claims there are 89 social networking sites “of note.” I’d argue that less than half of these sites are really notable, but my bet is that at best 20 of these will still be in business 3 years from now, when the VC dollars dry up and the popular ones have all been purchased by bigger companies. The vast majority of these sites just aren’t making money.
  4. This site.
  5. A site that is a fraction of the size of MySpace thinks it’s worth 3 times more.
  6. Industry pundits are valuing sites by the number of users again rather than their ability to earn money
  7. Youtube. As Mark Cuban notes, they’re giving stuff away for free, in this instance, server space and bandwidth. Further, much of their popularity rests on the illegal sharing of copyrighted content which is, in large part, what you’ll find on YouTube. At some point, perhaps after YouTube turns a profit, the RIAA and MPAA are going to go after YT the same way they cracked down on Napster. And what I consider the final nail in their eventual coffin is the fact that they’re a commodity. Anyone with some storage and some bandwidth can provide the exact same service as YouTube – the YT user experience just isn’t enough to differentiate them from any other video sharing service. Is there much reason to keep using YouTube now that MySpace, Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, and dozens of other sites all offer the same service? If YouTube is lucky, they’ll pull a Hotmail and sell before people realize this. If Hotmail had stayed independent, do you think they could have kept paying their email hosting bills? Who would know more about how little real value exists in a site that provides a commodity service for below cost than Mark Cuban himself?
  8. Shopping aggregators (and other aggregators) will help people find the best prices across sites, and users will become increasingly loyal to the aggregators and not to individual shopping sites, be they for tickets, travel, or any other non-niche items. This consolidation will push many e-tailers out of business, contributing to the bursting of the bubble. Mind you, this is a good thing. It’s capitalism at its best – the businesses that can’t compete will fall by the wayside.
  9. Napster still can’t get it together.
  10. Netscape.com is back. It’s user-driven. It still sucks.

Tivo Series 3, and how Tivo could make Series 2 not suck so much

Posted by joel on September 13, 2006 No comments

The new Tivo Series 3 debuted yesterday, finally offering HD recording, lagging behind previous offerings from DirecTV and Sony. On the surface this is great news, but the downside is that this beast will run you $800. (In all fairness, the products from DirecTV and Sony are in the same price range.)tivo-series-3_210x158.jpg

Clearly this is not a mass-market price point, and I will certainly be waiting to pick one up until they come way down in price. What I don’t understand is why current Tivos won’t at least support the passing through of HD signals; I don’t care so much if I can record in HD, but it’s a real pain that I have to take my Tivo out of the loop just to watch HD channels. Why not just pass those signals through, giving me a DVI, HDMI, or component out, so I can still enjoy my HD without bypassing the Tivo entirely? Would it be that expensive to just offer a Tivo Series 2 with an HDMI out? Maybe I’m missing something…

One more nail in the coffin of PS3: No games

Posted by joel on September 11, 2006 4 comments

Here’s the tally:

  • Launch delayed
  • $500 price point at launch (while Xbox 360s will likely be going for $350 by then)
  • 400,000 units for US Launch, 100,000 for Japanese launch due to difficulties in producing BluRay drives
  • BluRay games will load slower than HD-DVD (Source: A cross-platform game developer)
  • And perhaps worst of all, Sony can’t produce BluRay discs fast enough, so the launch titles will all have very low shipping volumes – even the top-tier licenses will only have 50,000 to 100,000 copies available this year. That’s right, even if you do want to spend $500 on the PS3, you may not be able to find games for it. When you consider that most of the sales for any console game happen within the first two months, any developer slated to release a PS3 launch title is in bad shape right now, and they’re certainly not happy with Sony. (Source: cross-platform game developer at an A-level publisher.)

Now, I do wish Sony the best, but I really don’t know how this launch could be shaping up to be any worse…

My orgasmic scenario

Posted by joel on September 1, 2006 4 comments

We are on the cusp of a complete paradigm shift in technology. Just as it took humanity many years to learn how to efficiently use the combustion engine to propel itself around the planet, we are just now learning what the Internet and wireless technologies can enable us to do. We’re just scratching the surface.

The perfect example of this is Tivo. I love my Tivo. And, I hate my Tivo. It’s simultaneously a quantum leap over the previous technology, and it’s still stuck in the Stone Age.

I don’t think I need to elaborate on why I love my Tivo because it’s been covered pretty extensively by a myriad of other authors.

As much as I love my Tivo, I hate how it’s so 1998. Yes, it’s pretty cool that I can stop live TV, and record it all to a massive hard drive so I can easily call it up whenever I want, but it actually is a step backwards in what it enables us as humans to do.

Back in the 80’s and 90’s, we could share TV programs with our friends by passing video cassette tapes to them. Now what do we do? The more technically savvy of us burn DVDs, but this is hardly easy for the mainstream market. Most of us ask our friends to come over so we can show them that new episode of Prison Break. We are tied to our Tivos. We’re tied to our living rooms. It sucks.

To borrow a phrase from a wise friend, here’s my orgasmic scenario – here’s how media technology should, and eventually will, work:

Tivo won’t be a box. It will be a website that records all my shows. Then, I can watch them on my couch, in my bedroom, at Jeremy’s house, and at the mall while my girlfriend tries on shoes. I won’t have to podcast it because I can download and watch video on whatever mobile device I have with me, be it a cell phone, a PDA, or a two-way super-secret wrist watch.

For that matter, all of my media will work like this. My Tool MP3s, my reruns of The Venture Brothers, my Stewie sound clips – I can listen and watch to my heart’s content from anywhere because I’ll be connected to the Internet everywhere.

I don’t want to be tied to a box in my living room. I don’t want my media held captive on hard drives – I want it whenever and wherever I want it.

The Slingbox which allows you to watch your TV from any ‘net-connected PC is a half-step in the right direction.

Of course, it isn’t Tivo’s fault that we’re in this situation. We’re held back by two major things – bandwidth, particularly for mobile devices, and the fact that most TV’s aren’t Internet-capable yet. But these are very temporary obstacles. Within a few years, every media device will be on the Internet, cell phones will have connections like cable-modems, and we’ll be free. We’ll frolic in the fields until we tire, and then we’ll sit back and watch Lost until it gets dark and we get creeped out and run back to the farm willy-nilly.

My orgasmic scenario is coming. It’s not far off. It will liberate the human race just as the automobile did. Is Tivo ready?

Podcasting: The Fax Machine of ’06

Posted by joel on August 16, 2006 3 comments

Within 5 years, you won’t hear the word podcast. You’ll forget the word podcast. It will go the way of the fax machine because it’s not a technology. It is a black hole of technology, sucking in all that is truly interesting and innovative. It’s the 8-track of the Internet.

apple.jpg

First off, I hereby resolve never to use the word podcast again. It doesn’t have anything to do with Apple’s iPod, and there’s no “casting” or broadcasting involved. More on this later.

Remember when you got your first cassette recorder with a microphone and you and your friends sat around recording each other talking? That’s (almost) exactly what a podcast is, except it’s cheaper to make copies of your mindless babble. The “pod” came from the fact that Apple is dominating the portable audio player market, so most people were listening to their audio downloads on their iPods. If we were any more sheep-like, we’d be calling operating systems “Windows Systems.”

Then, the fact that you can download this recorded audio somehow became known as casting, although broadcasting is generally accepted to be the distribution of a signal, like through television or cable, that can be simultaneously received by the watchers or listeners. But podcasts are downloaded on-demand, whenever the listener wants, or as the tech types like to say, asynchronously. It is not sent until the user requests it, and then it is only sent to a single user. Nothing casty about it.

So what we’re talking about is really an audio download, or as I like to call them, loadios (LOW-dee-ohs). These are not to be confused with loadeos (low-DAY-ohs), of course, (video downloads.)

So why are loadios destined to join Betamax and the upcoming PlayStation 3 on the scrapheap? The technology to make loadios obsolete is already here. The whole point of a loadio is that you can download it and play it whenever you want on your portable audio device. But perhaps you’ve noticed that every cell phone and PDA released in the last couple years has a wireless Internet connection. As those connections get fast enough, there will be no reason to download and store loadios because you’ll be able to listen to them on-demand, whenever and wherever you like. No need to have an iPod involved or to save the loadio anywhere – just ask for it, and you’re listening to it. Naturally, you’ll be able to save them if you want to your phone or PDA or ‘net-enabled audio player, but would there be any reason to call a saved audio program a “podcast” at this point? It’s just another saved program, like on your Tivo. This streaming, on-demand paradigm is not far away. It may even make iPods obsolete, but you can be sure Stevie Jobs is adding ‘net capabilities to his Pods as we speak.

Incidentally, what’s so “I” about the iPod? Usually that “I” stands for Internet, but any connection an iPod has to the Internet is purely incidental in that the computer you plug your iPod into may have an Internet connection, although there’s really no need for that unless you want to download music files to your computer where you can THEN transfer it to your non-Internet enabled iPod. I love marketing folks.

Of course, downloadable audio files are useful still. It’s cool that people can record their own little radio show and distribute it to their friends and listeners. But we’ve been able to download audio files on the Internet for 10-15 years now, so it just doesn’t seem that important, new, or revolutionary. The fact that you can put these files on a portable audio player like an iPod is cool, but just not all that new or exciting. And how the word “podcast” came to represent this activity, I have no idea. Perhaps some underground marketing from Apple? I look forward to a time when I don’t have to download files to my portable audio player and when I can pick and choose which programs I want to listen to on-demand.

So yes, I give podcasts *ahem* loadios another 2 years of any sort of relevance, and then another 3 years until they’re completely forgotten. People will listen to streaming audio (streamios) and watch streaming video (streameos) on any device they like, whenever they like. Check back with me in 2011 and we’ll see.