tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-192734772024-03-13T15:05:25.974+10:30edgepoliticsthe thin end of the [w]edgeSimon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-76946476626013474022009-03-13T16:53:00.005+10:302009-03-13T17:17:14.909+10:30edgepolitics has moved...We have built a mirror of this blog over at www.edgepolitics.com and will be adding new posts from there only in future... This blog will remain here for another 12 months perhaps, just as a pointer to the new site.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/Sbn9Iwy67bI/AAAAAAAAADA/BwAAqZ6Da3E/s1600-h/folkshomily.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 217px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/Sbn9Iwy67bI/AAAAAAAAADA/BwAAqZ6Da3E/s400/folkshomily.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312555562439470514" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;">[continue reading at: <a href="http://www.edgepolitics.com/">www.edgepolitics.com</a>]</span><br /></div><br />cheers :)Simon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-91953329754983211732009-02-21T00:26:00.009+10:302009-02-22T14:07:30.791+10:30The 'Semantic Web' vs 'Emergent Semantics' on the web<span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" ><i>…or syllogisms vs neologisms</i></span><i></i><br /><br />Tim Berners-Lee - <span style="font-style: italic;">“The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.”</span><br /><br />This statement projects the typical view of the ‘semantic web’ that somehow the chaotic and loosely defined nature of the web can be tamed by applying syllogistic deductive logic. However, syllogisms often lead to the inadvertent application of generalizations that, while seeking to prove truth, end up only proving that there are always exceptions to any rule. As a pertinent example, (and to maintain a theme):<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 102, 204);font-size:100%;" ><i>All people, are unique individual humans<br />All Facebook users are people<br />Therefore, all Facebook users are unique individual humans</i></span> <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> ...</span>...<span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span>(incorrect!)<br /><br />So, one could obviously factor in the undeterminable probability of <span style="font-style: italic;">'Facebook-Trolls'</span>, but to put in place a system that corrects the contextual mistakes of syllogisms would be a gargantuan task. As Clay Shirky stated back in November 2003, (discussing the semantic web) - <span style="font-style: italic;">“Any requirement that a given statement be cross-checked against a library of context-giving statements, which would have still further context, would doom the system to death by scale.”</span> (http://tinyurl.com/uakb)<br /><br />In the end, it could be said that it’s the ‘top-down’ nature of the push for the ‘semantic web’ that makes it so obviously not a ‘bottom-up’ phenomenon.<br /><br />The new breed of P2P search projects that are contending for the <span style="font-style: italic;">‘next big thing in search’</span> holy-grail, like Faroo (www.faroo.com) and Minerva (www.minerva-project.org) have taken the semantic overlay networks (SON) approach to organize peer-nodes and data objects into clusters in accordance with the inherent semantics of the content in these networks.<br /><br />These projects look at the semantics of an existing resource and attempt to use semantic rules and processes to facilitate the search and retrieval of data or files from that resource. The trouble is that this is a little like the semantic web approach, where semantic rules are formulated to attempt to make some order with regard to an open-ended amount of heterogeneous web data.<br /><br />This application of ‘semantics’ is in contrast to the way the term ‘semantics’ is being used in the fields of ‘Emergent-Semantics’ and ‘Semiotic-Dynamics’ which are more concerned with neologisms (newly coined words or expressions) and evolving language systems, and specifically, ‘tagging’ and ‘folksonomies’ as evidence of these phenomena. (see the work of Ciro Cattuto http://tinyurl.com/b5z3g7 and ref: www.tagora-project.eu )<br /><br />‘Emergent-Semantics’ and ‘Semiotic-Dynamics’ are relatively new fields of study that have gained some interest due in part to the general interest in ‘Semantic-Web’ research but specifically the recognized properties of folksonomies that display power-law and small-world characteristics. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Law)<br /><br />These fields, <span style="font-style: italic;">“study how semiotic relations can originate, spread, and evolve over time in populations, by combining recent advances in linguistics and cognitive science with methodological and theoretical tools from complex systems and computer science.”</span> [quote from: www.tagora-project.eu]<br /><br />The stated aims of the ‘Sematic Web’: <span style="font-style: italic;">“a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.”</span> [Berners-Lee 2001] seem somewhat quixotic by comparison to the immediacy and relevance of the study of the ‘emergent semantics’ of the web and the plainly obvious evolving language systems characterised by the tagging phenomenon, which are unmistakably ‘bottom-up’ in nature.<br /><br />So, what are the practical applications of ‘bottom-up’ emergent-semantic systems? I’ll have to leave that for another post.Simon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-49035680923850417672008-08-20T16:45:00.004+09:302008-08-20T16:58:31.766+09:30'Friends'… your new enemies<span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" ><i>or how ‘closed’ may become the new ‘open’…</i></span><i></i><br /><br />I have a friend, who up until recently, was quite a good friend, but then something strange happened. His dark, mischievous sense of humor, which had always been one of the qualities that made him unique and often terribly funny, suddenly discovered a vehicle that offered him something akin to supernatural powers. Like the power to transform himself into anyone he wished, or to be multiple people at the same time. The power to gain the confidence and trust of strangers by morphing into the identity of their trusted friends. On top of this, he had the power to anonymously wreak social havoc, distress and disorder, only to then be able to disappear like a thief in the night.<br /><br />How did he obtain these supernatural powers? He signed up with Facebook, and slowly but surely became a Facebook “Troll”. Unfortunately, he is not alone. There are many individuals that exploit the unintended gaps within the fabric of sites like Facebook to impersonate and humiliate people that they don’t know.<br /><br />One alarming aspect of this phenomenon is that these people are able to conduct this activity only by making quasi-partners of legitimate web-sites and services like Facebook and GMail, which is often used to generate fake email addresses to qualify for additional user accounts on social networking sites.<br /><br />So, with human nature being what it is, one thing that we can depend on is that the trend will continue and there is very little that can be done about it. This then leads to the conclusion that in many ways the web has reached a point akin to what is known as the<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> </span><a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons">‘tragedy of the commons’</a>… meaning that the common area that became popular has now become too popular. So popular that in fact many of the benefits have been spoiled.<br /><br />Its clear that many people will regret profoundly, releasing their private pictures and personal details innocently on the web, because once released, often they may never be able to be completely retrieved.<br /><br />Which brings me to the idea of ‘open’ vs ‘closed’… Is it just me, or does the idea of a closed personal network to exchange information with friends seem so much more appealing than an open one?<br /><br />I think there is a huge area of opportunity here, to appeal to ‘non-consumers’ of open-networks. These would be networks that people used to conduct genuine conversations with real friends from the real world. They would not necessarily be exclusive of strangers, but rather protective of relationships. New acquaintances could be invited in based on genuine qualification, again, in the real world.<br /><br />My guess is that this period in the first decade of the 21st Century will be characterized by recollections of how so many people got burned by being ‘too open’.Simon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-61988683166355251382008-05-27T11:43:00.010+09:302008-05-27T12:34:29.890+09:30Web-Advertising is sooooo broken....<span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danah_Boyd">Danah Boyd</a><span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);"> </span>had a great discussion going on her <a style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);" href="http://www.zephoria.org/">Zephoria</a> Blog in late 2007, called: <span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);">"</span><a style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);" href="http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/12/03/who_clicks_on_a.html">Who clicks on ads? And what might this mean?</a><span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);">"</span> There's some really worthwhile information there, starting with some quotes from Dave Morgan (AOL Global Advertising Strategy)</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">"99% of web-users don't click on ads... and only a tiny % of those actually purchase!"</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" >But wait... it gets worse!</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >"Ninety-nine percent of Web users do not click on ads on a monthly basis. Of the 1% that do, most only click once a month. Less than two tenths of one percent click more often. That tiny percentage makes up the vast majority of banner ad clicks. ~ Who are these "heavy clickers"? They are predominantly female, indexing at a rate almost double the male population. They are older. They are predominantly Midwesterners, with some concentrations in Mid-Atlantic States and in New England. What kinds of content do they like to view when they are on the Web? Not surprisingly, they look at sweepstakes far more than any other kind of content. Yes, these are the same people that tend to open direct mail and love to talk to telemarketers."<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;">That's actually pretty revealing data, especially the rough demographic profile of the clickers themselves. This may go some way to explaining the proliferation of those really annoying gambling pop-up ads and flashing, vibrating banners proclaiming to (what would surely be) a seemingly implausibly gullible web-user who by some incredible stroke of luck, has just won a really neat prize! ~ Regrettably, market forces don't lie... it seems these ads are apparently targeted at the only people who dependably click.</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />As is often the case, the blog's commentariate kick in with some worthwhile observations:<br /><br />CHRISTOPHER: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >"There is another aspect to the question of "who is clicking on these ads" that I don't believe has been raised. That is, if the ads are taken as indicative of "level of interest in the population at large", then the people who are clicking on those ads are the ones who are driving marketing decisions for the world at large."<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;">and KEVIN:</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" > "...Its the marketer that gets hurt - HE/She advertised to the wrong person. The clicker did not buy anything- (do we know if they convert?) It means that ads in the web world are worth even less than we thought. It means that Google's revenue and business model is a huge scam?"<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);font-size:100%;" >[my note: even Google’s Adwords average only around a 2% CTR, and Google consultant Professor Hal Varian has stated that less than 2% of ads might get clicks and less than 2% of clicks might convert to sales, meaning that 0.04% of clicks might result in sales... ~ A $40B web-ad market might sound impressive, but according to Sir Martin Sorrell, of WPP, the wider Advertising market is a Trillion $ market; so with such dubious current ROI, that $40B might really currently be largely driven by hype, and the pressure to be 'a player']</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br />But my favorite comment comes from CASEY: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br />"I actually work for a company that does a lot of online advertising campaigns, so I think I can shed some light this. The honest-to-god truth is that the people in charge of these campaigns have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. They describe their target audiences with phrases like, "Interested Non-Users," or by using terms they've made up, such as the gag-worthy "prosumer." </span><span style="font-size:100%;">[SUBSTANTIAL EDIT] </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" > "...Of course, the punchline to all of this is the fact that most click-throughs don't translate to actual sales. If an ad campaign is relying on accidental click-throughs, or on attracting the attention of a niche market who can't afford what they're selling, then the joke is on the person footing the bill. The model is clearly broken, and most people in the industry know that, but the people signing the checks aren't in on the joke."<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;">This all indicates a kind of grand-illusion based on volume metrics: i.e. If total number of clicks is counted in millions, even a tiny percentage will bring some users sales. However, It’s the same logic as Spam and ‘Cold-Calling’ i.e. If you call 100 people and only get one buyer, it’s a sale, but you really annoy the other 99.<br /><br />A post on: mini-news.com, entitled "<a style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);" href="http://mini-news.com/2008/04/bye_bye_ads">Bye Bye Ads</a>" quotes Usability expert Jakob Nielsen: "The most prominent result from the new eyetracking studies is not actually new. We simply confirmed for the umpteenth time that banner blindness is real. Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it's actually an ad."<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />These are <a style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);" href="http://us.hsmglobal.com/notas/33773-clayton-christensen--disruptive-innovation">Clayton Christensen's 'Non-Consumers'</a>... 'Non-Consumers' of web advertising.</span><br /></span>Simon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-12967070764575497692008-02-25T11:17:00.017+10:302008-02-27T01:55:07.384+10:30The Medium is the Mess....Although Web leviathans like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook all clearly leverage aspects of the many-to-many/ peer-to-peer trend, they also usurp and plunder the power freely given by their users via constraining them inside the legacy client-server system of the web. The difficulty is, that in the web-context, the P2P meme’s pluralistic tendencies, as is obvious on sites like <a href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net">'The P2P Foundation'</a> (of which I am a member) tend to see the term 'P2P' applied in ever increasing ways, arguably diluting some of its power and potential, and its valid identity as a technical-system born of the Internet that actually predates 'The Web' by about 20 years.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153); font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" ><font>A more objective Value-Axis of the Internet?</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);"></font></span><br /><br />From where I stand there is a clear ‘value-axis’ existing on the Internet, and a rather peculiar ‘Cargo-Cult’ type adherence to a dominant cultural meme called “The Web” which as a term is used too often interchangeably with the term “Internet”. This simple semantic muddle must end, as it is the source of a lot of confused reasoning. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/R8K8qsJxqxI/AAAAAAAAABc/FkF3TJLdK2U/s1600-h/value_axis.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/R8K8qsJxqxI/AAAAAAAAABc/FkF3TJLdK2U/s400/value_axis.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5170902763767442194" /></a>There are three primary components in a value-axis of the Internet, Connectivity, Communications and Transactions. Of these three, Connectivity is the most fundamental, with the next most fundamental factor being Communications and then Transactions with all other general applications, (information, entertainment, blogs, websites, web2.0 etc) sitting above these three. This simple taxonomy ranks factors in terms of which is more primary in its ability to ‘enable’ the others.<br /><br />Websites, Portals (Facebook, MySpace, Saleforce, etc) are at the upper end of this scale of importance. (ie least fundamental) This does not mean to imply that consumer or business websites and ASP-based web-services are not important, but rather that as a rule these sites function atop a foundation of established connectivity, communications and transaction protocols, and are not in themselves ‘fundamental’ in the sense that they exclusively enable higher applications.<br /><br />The Web itself sits on layer 2, ‘Communications’. After all, the Web, for all the hype associated with it, really just resembles a massive Amusement Park accessed by obtaining a ‘Browser’ ticket. In other words the Browser is your ticket, and you ride this communication platform which is actually built on the more fundamental Connectivity layer. Its no secret where the value truly resides in this mega-market duality. Browsers are free, Connectivity you pay for, and the ‘Attention Economy’ (acknowledgement to Umair Haque) sits like an ecosystem above all that, with Google currently at the top of the food-chain.<br /><br />In his illuminating article ‘Content is Not King’ written in 2001, Andrew Odlyzko nailed it with prescient clarity, even though he, like so many, has used the term Internet, when he could well have been referring to the Web.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">“The Internet is widely regarded as primarily a content delivery system. Yet historically, connectivity has mattered much more than content. Even on the Internet, content is not as important as is often claimed, since it is e-mail that is still the true "killer app."</span></span><br />- Andrew Odlyzko, First Monday: http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_2/odlyzko/ <br /><br />Email (by the way) has the same status as the Web, it is a communication platform on layer two. Andrew Odlyzko does not distinguish between Communications and Connectivity. In his article referred to above, they are to all intents and purposes the same, yet his message is clear. Its the connectivity between people that is more fundamental (and valued) than the content exchanged.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153); font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" ><font>The Web and the Internet are not interchangeable concepts</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);"></font></span><br /><br />So we need to appreciate that the internet and the World Wide Web are quite different things. The internet is a network that is in fact a loose array of interconnected networks. The Web has been superimposed on this global network, and is the dominant overlay-system, but it is not the only possible system that can utilize that network. The web has allowed many hundreds of millions of people to download information from ‘servers’ via protocols like DNS, (domain name system) and communicate between each other via email by use of DNS and SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol). However these protocols, serve to lock users into the ‘client’ paradigm where ‘clients’ have to accept the terms of the businesses that control the web servers. This system also helps to make the Web and email systems vulnerable to a wide array of security problems. Albert Benschop pulls back the curtains in this slightly ominous description.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">“The exponential growth and far-reaching commercialization of the web have lead to an ever-stronger manifestation of the power structures of society in the virtual world. At present specialized computers channel the data traffic on the Internet and portals and search machines such as AOL, Google and Yahoo! dominate and exploit the market of the internet-dollars. Strongly concentrated hubs have arisen that play a crucial role in the Internet traffic. They are monster-servers, diverting their information to millions of regular web-users.” </span></span><br />- Albert Benschop, Peculiarities of CyberSpace- University of Amsterdam<br /><br />The client/server paradigm of the World Wide Web, overlaid on the internet in the late 1980‘s, with its multiple layers of servers sitting on their underlying enabling protocols (DNS, SMTP, FTP etc) represented, at the time, a ground-breaking innovation and has gone on to become a global phenomenon. However, as the Web has grown, its hierarchical structure, identity and addressing protocols have also facilitated many of its almost intractable negative externalities.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/R8IRksJxqwI/AAAAAAAAABU/3xwus3hM3-Q/s1600-h/Bullet_points.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/R8IRksJxqwI/AAAAAAAAABU/3xwus3hM3-Q/s400/Bullet_points.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5170714644199877378" /></a><br />For all the web’s vulnerabilities to attack and corruption, there is considerable ‘lock-in’ to WWW legacy systems, with the marketplace in general having built up a history of blind-acceptance trust and familiarity with it’s processes. This is a large part of the conundrum typified in the usual search for solutions to the web’s problems. <br /><br />Projects like APML (Attention Profiling Mark-up Language), BCCF (the Buyer Centric Commerce Forum) and Project VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) are all well intentioned projects by switched-on people who want to do something about the inherent inequities and privacy problems of the web, and are arguably contained within this larger P2P pluralism. But… with the greatest respect, they all miss the point. Doing it actually ‘on the Web’, is self-defeating because its not a level playing field. There’s an orthodoxy present on the Web as dominant as the Catholic Church during the middle ages.<br /><br />This is where an understanding of the pure definition of P2P, as it has developed on the Internet, may provide an instructive counter-weight, and clues to dealing with the over-hyped and over-rated orthodoxies of the web.Simon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-77988958844211950522007-08-07T23:33:00.000+09:302007-08-08T00:08:01.091+09:30P2P vs Web ~ keeping the genie in the bottleThe term P2P already carries significant baggage in many people’s minds, as it is often associated with the illegal sharing of MP3 music files, software and movies on the Internet. However, the term in its usual Internet context in fact only means ‘peer-to-peer’ and the definition of a ‘peer’ is non-specific. In fact, P2P means many different things to different people.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/RriBtRtHxQI/AAAAAAAAABM/acLbYAuo-JA/s1600-h/3P2Ps.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/RriBtRtHxQI/AAAAAAAAABM/acLbYAuo-JA/s400/3P2Ps.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5095965593216468226" /></a><br />Communication applications like email and ‘Instant Messaging’ (IM) are sometimes referred to as P2P or being closely related, because they are ‘user-to-user’ services. To make matters more confusing, the Banking and Finance industries use the term P2P to indicate ‘person-to-person’ financial transactions like those made through ‘Western Union’, and more recently, the internet payment service PayPal has been designated by the Banks as falling into this category. So when mainstream media or file-sharers and ‘geeks’ refer to P2P, they are talking about ‘network and device functionality’, but when Banks talk about ‘P2P’ they are talking about ‘people transferring money to each other, outside of the Banking system’.<br /><br />All of the definitions indicate an increasing orientation toward a kind of ‘one-to-one’ connectivity rather than the one-to-many model of traditional media, ‘broadcast-television’ or the client/server paradigm of the WWW. The P2P meme also has a societal meaning in that it implies a cooperative approach to social-networking and commercial activity demonstrated in new forms of group-association and collective publishing on the internet. The ‘Wiki’ and the ‘Open-Source-Software’ movement being good examples of this broad trend. Michel Bauwens, in his work, ‘P2P and Human Evolution’ defines P2P as: <span style="font-style:italic;">“a form of human network-based organisation which rests upon the free participation of equipotent partners”</span> This, could be called the ‘many-to-many’ movement, because it is one-to-one, on a mass scale.<br /><br />The social phenomenon of P2P usage that is gaining strength on the internet, is a kind of pluralistic global super-community with a theoretically unlimited number of widely dispersed users. To join this community is to subscribe to a system of shared resources and distributed ownership, where all users contribute their own capital resource, their computer and processing power, to the open community. For internet users, being part of this new phenomenon is an innately communal and social process.<br /><br />The thing that is often overlooked is that some of the biggest successes on the web, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook for instance, are facilitating aspects of the many-to-many/peer-to-peer movement, but doing so within the constraints of the client-server system of the web. This produces a weird kind of asymmetry. The users are creating the content, and the web vendors are trying to keep the genie in the bottle. Its all about control... When users are finally given the keys to the toy cupboard, I don't think they will want to give them back.Simon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-82578100788186441402007-07-22T23:40:00.000+09:302007-08-09T11:16:12.669+09:30Software as Disservice<span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:120%;" ><span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-style:italic;">I have come to the conclusion that, far from liberating consumer's and businesses, the whole 'Software as a Service' movement, is inherently disempowering to users.</span></span></span></span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/RqOYNhtHxOI/AAAAAAAAAA8/cxf7Lq2tnsA/s1600-h/thinclient3.png"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/RqOYNhtHxOI/AAAAAAAAAA8/cxf7Lq2tnsA/s400/thinclient3.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5090079362012136674" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Firstly, some definitions. In referring to 'Software as a Service' (SaaS) I include Application Service Providers (ASP's) because, although the ASP model is seen as inferior in service to the more recent SaaS model, they both essentially do the same thing... they process data outside the client's PC as a service. This idea has steadily gained momentum and along the way has become associated with <span style="font-style:italic;">'Web2.0-Think'</span>. Tim O'Reilly et all, talk of <span style="font-style:italic;">'Web as a Platform'</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">'Software above the Level of a Single Device'</span> and consequently, ideas like this have been jumped on by companies like Microsoft who have tried to co-opt the movement by coining new cool sounding terms like <a href="http://news.com.com/Microsofts+Cloud+OS+takes+shape/2100-1007_3-6196152.html?tag=html.alert.hed">CloudOS</a> which is really just another Microsoft euphemism for continued world domination... Visualize Steve Ballmer chanting:<span style="font-style:italic;">"developers, developers developers, developers!"</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/RqReehtHxPI/AAAAAAAAABE/qCczzpEqxcA/s1600-h/MSquote.png"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/RqReehtHxPI/AAAAAAAAABE/qCczzpEqxcA/s400/MSquote.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5090297357372212466" /></a><br /><br />The anomaly that I see, is that the broad SaaS trend is fundamentally at odds with the massive investment consumers and businesses have made and continue to make in computer processing power, and Web2.0's 'Architecture of Participation' is built on that processing power. The extent to which the Web2.0 movement have actually embraced the SaaS model as serving some undeniable user benefit is unclear and therefore to assume so, could potentially be misreading the situation. However, the reason I am drawing the parallels here is that it is an issue that needs to be cleared up. 'Software as a Service' inherently serves the interests of vendors as much as, if not more than end-users by attempting to make users dependent on licensing technology and services rather than owning them and maintaining those competencies in-house. <a href="http://www.longtail.com/about.html">Chris Anderson</a> and <a href="http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/05/the_long_tail.html">Tim O'Reily et al</a> talk of the 'Long Tail'... Steve Ballmer talks of "selling to the Long Tail".<br /><br />In my view, this goes all the way back to Hotmail. In the early days people used a hotmail account only when traveling or for non important or 'anonymous' email. Of course many students and ordinary folk used hotmail as their primary email account and that fed its stunning growth. However, it was also a curse, as I noted in an earlier post (Putting P2P in Perspective - April 22 2006) even Bill Gates freely admitted that:<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153); font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" ><span><br /><br />"...over half of what goes through (the hotmail servers) is actually mail that's spam that people are not interested in receiving.” <span style="font-weight: bold;">- Bill Gates</span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);"><br /></span><br />The trouble is now, as I found out the other day when helping a friend with her new Mac, that webmail is the only kind of email that some people know about. My friend simply had no idea that there was any other kind of email! She has never used a proper email program, has never had a proper email address and had no idea what I was talking about when I said:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"With a real email program, you download your email and it stays on your computer, including the files you receive, like pictures, PDFs etc. So, you don't have to go online to review all the emails you have received"</span><br /><br />She had no idea... To her, when you check email, you have to go online and log onto Hotmail and that is the only way to get email or to review old emails. She is clearly not an early adopter, obviously. She in fact is what marketers call "a lagard", but if you look at the product adoption curves for market growth on the web you will know that she is far from alone. This is where the disparity becomes evident. She is able to afford the latest iMac, (easily) but the little 'Mail' icon in the tool bar is a foreign area for her. She's got an abundance of processing power and storage space, she only ever checks email from that PC, but the market has trained her to depend on a third party for a service as basic as email... I think she has been disadvantaged.<br /><br />Now, consider Salesforce.com and such sites. They want everyone to throw away their in-house software and migrate on mass to the quasi 'thin-client' approach and use <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">their</span></span> software instead of yours. This trend is pushed heavily by web2.0 entrepreneurs and the venture capital industry because its a business model that keeps 'control' with the vendor and keeps the client having to come back time and time again to that vendor for a service that in earlier models may have meant sporadic or once-only purchases. It also provides the 'multiplier' to shore-up the business model. So, where does the benefit really lie, and who's really driving this model, consumers or vendors?<br /><br />The 'Software as Service' doctrine is that it is a: <span style="font-style: italic;">"low-cost way for businesses to obtain the same benefits of commercially licensed, internally operated software without the associated complexity and high initial cost."</span> (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_Service">wikipedia</a>) However, in many ways its a model that is also at odds with the service enabled by P2P applications like Skype, where users individually and collectively power the software that underwrites the service. This undeniable trend (eDonkey, Limewire, Bittorent) is pointing in the opposite direction, as it utilizes each consumer's capital outlay in PC processing power and bandwidth. So... What is so 'web2.0' about Software as Service? This is web2.0 vendors in service of themselves, arguably.Simon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-21698991941539508552007-07-17T22:08:00.000+09:302007-07-17T23:57:11.309+09:30Here come the (targeted???) adsThere's a kind of brand-dilution that occurs when previously user-centric sites like StumbleUpon and YouTube get swallowed up by the likes of EBuy and Gobble. The valuations, and prices paid for these sites are so high, that the new bean counters inevitably force the introduction of advertising that essentially breaks the site's unwritten contract with users. - Its been creeping in over at YouTube since the purchase, but everyone expected that. However, EBuy is making a mess of it over at StumbleVideo, because the whole proposition is more delicate... Users expect relevance.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/Rpy97gvFH4I/AAAAAAAAAAU/oS7p2dtcWlk/s1600-h/stumbleX.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/Rpy97gvFH4I/AAAAAAAAAAU/oS7p2dtcWlk/s400/stumbleX.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5088150509119152002" /></a><br />Gambling ads??? Gee I don't remember clicking 'gambling' when I set my Stumble preferences... and of course I did not; and those 4 and 4.5 star recommendations for "as she did not wear anything" and "beautiful women"... seem a bit weird. Is this the same StumbleUpon that received such rave reviews and quadrupled its user base in 2006? Well, yes and no... Same company, but after a US$75M purchase by Ebay, it has a new style and agenda. Their wikipedia entry which sounds a lot like it was written in-house, may need some updating:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">"StumbleUpon uses knowledge of user preferences to deliver targeted advertising. A small proportion of the 'stumbles' users come across (typically less than 2%) are sponsored pages matching their topics of interest. For example, those signed up for photography will occasionally see an ad related to photography. Such content is vetted by humans for "quality and relevance" prior to its delivery." </span><br /><br />Just like the sudden emphasis on aggressively building the user-base, the company is stretching the truth and the friendship with their users.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/RpzFHAvFH5I/AAAAAAAAAAc/zFUNuFn0Qq0/s1600-h/stumblePromise.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xt1YPgNZ47o/RpzFHAvFH5I/AAAAAAAAAAc/zFUNuFn0Qq0/s400/stumblePromise.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5088158403269042066" /></a><br />"The more friends you have using StumbleUpon, the more new websites you'll discover"... Well, actually, Ebuy... that's not quite true. Bringing friends to StumbleUpon has no direct correlation with one's chance of discovering new sites, but it will help Ebay sell more advertising on the site. However, Ebay has already started soiling their own nest by allowing cheap and crass ads to break with the sites established collaborative filtering promise that user's have become accustomed to, and which is alluded to on the wikipedia page <span style="font-style:italic;">"StumbleUpon uses knowledge of user preferences to deliver targeted advertising"</span> <br /><br />This is a sell-out, and a dangerous one. It risks alienating the existing user-base, and it dilutes the brand. The same phenomenon is of course occurring over at YouTube. In trying to achieve ROI, Ebuy and Gobble, leave themselves open for inevitable disruption.Simon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-69214739826331761572007-06-21T23:32:00.000+09:302007-06-22T00:02:15.721+09:30Where the puck is going...Clayten Christensen is fond of quoting ice skating legend Wayne Gretzky, who apparently attributed his luck with the puck to "Skating to where the puck is going, not where it is". In other words Gretzky watched the pattern of the game being played and felt confident to predict the probability of the puck's movement, spilling out from a pack of skaters. <br /><br />Christensen uses this as a metaphor for spotting opportunities for innovation in business, and of course specifically to explain why some people see an opportunity for a (potentially) disruptive innovation where other people presumably see... zip.<br /><br />This metaphor has stuck in my mind ever since hearing Christensen explain it a few years ago. When you truly start to focus on the challenge of implementing a 'disruptive strategy', all sorts of strange things start to happen. Firstly, you instinctively begin to disassociate yourself from the status quo, because the herd can not by definition be following the same scent as you, can they? No.. they are skating to where the puck is... and there they are, as plain as day, reveling in it. <br /><br />But you don't want to go where these guys are going, because the laugh you want is the last one... and you know that it is like a science. Its a discipline. It's achievable.Simon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-1145980059959948472006-04-22T21:45:00.000+09:302007-08-09T11:14:04.888+09:30Putting P2P in perspective...Before the WWW, the internet operated essentially like an imperfect decentralized P2P network with early University-based computers, making direct connections between US campuses. Around 1990 the DNS/WWW paradigm began to be over-laid on top of this network. This enabled the advent of the browser and name-paths to file-servers on which were placed the ‘web page’ interface whereupon wide spread adoption began. Web, E-mail and Database servers became ‘server-farms’ and eventually ‘server-clouds’ as the system was scaled-up to cope with exploding demand.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/1600/aol-server-farm3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/320/aol-server-farm3.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>However, as demand went through the roof, no amount of money could guarantee QOS, as even the biggest systems on the planet with thousands of interlinked servers, routinely failed. All the while people got used to the notion that the normal web-user was by default, a ‘receiver’ or buyer of information in the equation, and not normally a seller or ‘provider’. However, applications where users could interact directly with each other (Hotmail, ICQ, Messenger) and publish and sell to each other (Blogging, E-Bay) became among the most popular applications on the web. As the inter-linked server/client networks grew to unprecedented proportions, spam, e-mail-borne-viruses, trojan-horses, identity-spoofing, ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks, ‘phishing’ and identity-theft became uncontrollable and started choking and attacking the very fabric of the web. By March 2004 60% of all email traffic was illegal ‘unsolicited email’ from strangers (SPAM).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/1600/billg2.0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 134px; height: 132px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/320/billg2.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153); font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" ><font>“I get a lot of spam, probably as much as anybody in the room.<br />My e-mail address is well-known… The Hotmail® servers that we run, which are the free and subscription e-mail capabilities we offer, today over half of what goes through there is actually mail that's spam that people are not interested in receiving.”</span></span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);"></font><br />- Bill Gates (quote taken from the Microsoft website)</span></span><br /><br />So, Hotmail is effectively a giant spam-machine, and even Bill Gates both suffers from the problem and cannot solve it. Products like Qurb, Esafe, MX Tunnel and MailFrontier-Gateway add yet more levels of complexity and/or servers onto the internet to try and block spam, effectively passing on the problem, but not dealing with the cause. The WWW client/server paradigm has achieved massive scale and overwhelming success, producing countless valuable services, but there are now notable flaws and vulnerabilities in the model. In the mean time, P2P file-sharing has become an unstoppable phenomenon, with unprecedented levels of adoption.<br /><br />On these new systems, people experienced constant availability of a truly massive amount of shared digital content and these tens of millions of people began illegally exchanging hundreds of millions of music, software and video files, with total strangers. The web had become a giant impersonal shopping mall littered with illegal activity, where users were largely disconnected and insulated from the impact that one user can have on another. In this unregulated playground there is an intangible (although sometimes very real) cost involved in flouting copyright law. Some negative effects of file-sharing are as follows:<br /><br />• The user runs a risk of litigation or closure of their service due to litigation.<br />• ‘Free riders’ people who download files but do not contribute files to the network<br />• People with slow connections slow down performance of file exchange<br />• Poisoning of the network with corrupted files to discourage users.<br />• Customer churn (and thereby peer un-availability) can cause inconsistent service<br />• Receiving incorrect-files or viruses in files via anonymous file exchange<br />• Exposure to highly illegal material mixed in with typical music and video file lists.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/1600/RevengeCopyrightCopsNYT.0.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/400/RevengeCopyrightCopsNYT.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 153);"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Already more than 12,000 file-sharers have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Some record companies have been accused of poisoning P2P networks with bogus files to discourage users, and in 2002 a company called OVERPEER released a product that floods P2P networks with fake files in an attempt to stop the trading of "unauthorized" mp3s.</span><br /><br />Since Napster, peer-to-peer applications have been evolving steadily and in diverse ways, with new forms appearing as varying hybrids of web and pure-network technologies. The DNS and client/server systems have provided P2P applications with easy access to the web’s 600+ million user-base, and thereby, to an unprecedented forum from which to usurp and deal in almost any kind of digital-file. (whether previously sold on the web or not) However it has been the resulting law-suits targeted at applications with server-based file-lists and the quest for user-anonymity to protect against the current wave of litigation against individual users, that have been the main drivers of product innovation, back toward forms of decentralization for many new P2P systems. The illicit nature of user-activity with these applications have in many ways interfered with their unfettered commercial growth, creating no clear market-leader, an over-supply of vendors and a fragmentation (and to some degree) a stigmatizing of the user-base.<br /><br />At the same time, some of the most successful legal new P2P based variants like Skype, and a new crowd of ‘legal’ music sharing applications, like Weedshare, Bitmunk and PeerImpact still use servers (and WWW infrastructure) to perform functions like coordinating and locating peers. BitTorrent and variants like Supranova and Lokitorrent, (which recently closed their service due to legal pressure) also require centralized web-based ‘trackers’ (a form of server which co-ordinates the transfer of metadata across a BitTorrent network) to function effectively.<br /><br />Although new technical innovations in P2P have often been driven by the need to avoid prosecution for illegal file-sharing, web protocols have still been very ‘sticky’ for developers due to the various levels of functional assistance they provide, so there has been reluctance by commercial developers to explore and develop pure forms of P2P. For all the web’s vulnerabilities to attack and corruption, there is considerable ‘lock-in’ to WWW legacy systems, with the marketplace in general having built up a history of relative trust and tolerance and familiarity with it’s flawed processes.Simon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-1144516898480411222005-12-09T16:48:00.000+10:302006-04-26T01:34:00.390+09:30What do iPod/iTunes and Skype have in common?<span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >More than headphones and wireless ambitions... its all about the 'free-stuff'.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/1600/iPod.skype2.0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/320/iPod.skype2.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> They are both audio-centric product/services that are dependent on the internet. Skype is a P2P application made valuable by a device, (your PC, or more recently, your mobile phone or PDA) while the iPod is a device made valuable by P2P applications.<br /><br />Both were initially designed to require headpones, and both have just made their first tentative steps into wireless. Skype through its September '05 deal with Germany's E-Plus, and Apple with its deal with Motorola and Cingular to sell the iTunes-equipped Motorola E790 mobiles, with more wireless deals and developments to follow for both companies no doubt.</div><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:180%;" >"Both have been the catalysts for a growing cluster of<br />interlinked third-party products"<br /></span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/1600/3apps.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/320/3apps.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>The two things that really strike me as similar are firstly, the way both Apple and Skype have managed to move these products beyond being single propositions, to each being the catalyst for a growing cluster of interlinked third-party products. Skype have done this by releasing their API which has spawned a growing batch of extensible ‘Skypbrids’ (Jyve, Yapper, Spontania etc) that have dramatically extended the companies influence. Apple have achieved a similar result by fostering a plethora of third party vendors who have produced scores of iPod add-ons and accessories. (and this is to say nothing of the fortuitous gift of Podcasting… Wow, what a lucky break that was!) In short, both companies are well on their way to turning their products into standards or platforms, depending on which way you define those terms.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/1600/skype_talkfree3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/320/skype_talkfree3.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Both Skype and the iPod have also become functional participants in global-scale ‘free-stuff’ consumer movements. Skype, by being the best-known conduit for free global voice calls, and the iPod, by being the best recepticle for playing digital music, in a world that is literally awash with free music. These factors have allowed Apple and Skype to harness some very powerful network effects, and network effects are what enduring success in the information economy is all about, just ask Bill Gates.<br /><br />A network-effect is said to occur when the value of a product or service increases with the amount of people that use it. If this increasing value is highly prized, a product can become almost invincible, because the more popular it becomes the more value the user receives. Network effects apply to Skype in exactly the same way that they are often explained in relation to the telephone. i.e. the more telephones there are, the more people you can call, so the more useful the facility becomes. Skype is climbing that curve, and has been assisted by the way it clusters users into myriad subsets, in what David P. Reed calls the ‘sneaky exponential’ of ‘Group Forming Networks’.<br /><br />However, in regard to the iPod, the Network Effect theory is not so obvious. One iPod or 10 million iPods, how does the value increase per user? To achieve the power of network effects, Apple had to finesse its way through a potential mine-field to build value for the iPod from another part of music’s value-scape. (have you worked it out yet?)<br /><br />Unlike the telephone, Microsoft’s claim to ‘Network Effect’ status was not so much because of the inherent usefulness of the product, but the value of the countless third party software titles made for the platform. Bill’s system became increasingly useful because it gave customers access to all that software. Steve’s iPod and its cross-platform virtual counterpart iTunes, are useful in the same way; they give the user the best method of interfacing and listening to all that music, and most of it is not coming from the ITMS.<br /><br />As at Q3/2005, Apple had apparently sold approximately 500 million songs from the ITMS and approximately 22 million iPods, so this equals roughly 22.7 ITMS songs purchased per iPod and this in turn equates to only around 0.7% of a 3,000 song iPod. with many iPods potentially holding up to 15,000 songs. Although some of that vast iPod hard disk space is being filled by copying personal CDs, this still represents a massive freeing of music from the CD format taking it one small step away from broad dissemination on the internet. So, it is fairly clear that one of the main reasons that the iPod has been so successful is that it has tapped into the most controversial and pervasive internet phenomenon of recent times, music file-sharing; and this is where Apple has (indirectly) benefited from those very useful network effects.<br /><br />It works like this. The more songs that are available on a file sharing network, the greater the value of that collection to downloaders. This is why all the major P2P file-sharing networks are open systems that interlink their massive virtual music libraries. The iPod and its sister product iTunes sit smack in the middle of this massive ocean of music in much the same way that MS-DOS and then Windows sat astride an ocean of PC software. The Pod/Tunes is simply the best way to convert, sort and listen to digital music. (but don’t tell BMG and Warner Music, they are finding the relationship with Apple a challenge as it is!)<br /><br />Obviously, the Video iPod has been designed in exactly the same way, with a legitimate shop-front in iTunes, but a flexible functionality that allows for much wider usage.Simon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-1144505381362920222005-11-30T23:37:00.000+10:302006-04-26T01:35:00.260+09:30Solipsis; the arrival of something new<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/1600/Solip2.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/400/Solip2.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >Down in Miami Beach today (Wednesday 30th Nov. 2005) on a street corner, in front of the Bass Museum on 2121 Park Avenue (between 21st and 22nd Streets), there is a 'happening' taking place.</span><br /><br />Its called “The Digital Street Corner.” Its ‘Performance Art’ meets the ‘Virtual World’. Why is this interesting? Because, although the technology is young and somewhat beta-ish, it is quite likely an indicator of a major new trend.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/1600/solipsis.0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4415/1686/200/solipsis.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>It is Solipsis, an open source project designed to enable an infinitely scalable global network. It does not use DNS, It does not use servers. It is in fact a fully decentralized P2P network, or what is known as ‘Pure P2P’. They call it a ‘Metaverse’ or ‘virtual public territory.’ Relying on its own protocols, Solipsis can potentially be inhabited by an unlimited number of participants, and, take note blogosphere… this network also enables personal blogging! (although currently fairly rudimentary)<br /><br />The concept of a Metaverse is not so new, it’s a term that was coined in Neal Stephenson’s groundbreaking novel "Snow Crash" and is not dissimilar to the central idea in the Wachowski brother’s Matrix trilogy. Projects like San Francisco based Linden Lab’s ‘Second Life’ and ‘There’ which was spun-off from San Mateo CF based Forterra Systems, fall into the ‘Metaverse’ category. What makes Silopsis different is, not only that it is totally 'communications' orientated, but that it was sponsored and funded by a telecommunications company, France Telecom; and that single fact makes this project quite fascinating.<br /><br />The name Solipsis, is taken from the word ‘solipsism’ which means: “the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist” (hmmm… deep!) This is a not too oblique pointer to the open-source politics behind the venture. Its about empowering the individual, and getting right down to the granular end-user level, and on the Internet you can’t really go down much further than that.<br /><br />Designed by Joaquin Keller and Gwendal Simon at France Télécom Research and Development Labs, Silopsis has been billed as a “free and open source system for a massively multi-participant shared virtual world.” Quoting directly from the France telecom web site:<br /><br />“Solipsis is a public virtual territory. The world is initially empty and only users will fill it by creating and running entities. No pre-existing cities, habitants nor scenario to respect... Solipsis is open-source, so everybody can enhance the protocols and the algorithms. Moreover, the system architecture clearly separates the different tasks, so that peer-to-peer hackers as well as multimedia geeks can find a good place to have fun here!”<br /><br />“The Solipsis program is designed in various layers. Each user first runs a program that connects him or her to the virtual world. This initial program also gives him or her a position in the virtual world. A second program or navigator then lets the user move around and interact with neighbours, since communication is the reason for which the Solipsis system was created. The navigator allows the 2D graphic representation of the user's avatar, neighbourhood and neighbouring avatars.”<br /><br />“It also contains a chat room interface for communicating with them, and a favourites system to mark favourite places. It can also warn the user when he or she moves close to a peer with the characteristics he or she is looking for.”<br /><br />Note: BTW, don’t expect the Ritz… I don’t think it traverses firewalls too well. I have been using it for a couple of weeks and have yet to work out how to find another human being on the network, virtual or not. However, it did make me quite excited; because I know what it represents.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Instructions go to:</span><br />http://solipsis.netofpeers.net/wiki2/index.php/Happening_Download<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Happening starts:</span> EST, GMT-5, Miami Beach: 9:00 PM to 11:00 PM November 30th, 2005<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">“The Digital Street Corner”</span> go to: http://www.fredforest.com<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Main Solipsis page:</span> http://solipsis.netofpeers.net/wiki2/index.php/Main_PageSimon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-1132839232654065202005-11-23T11:25:00.000+10:302006-06-21T04:23:02.023+09:30The Open Source Movement; a Socialist phenomenon?<span style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> No... "Open Source is not about a lack of property rights, it’s<br /> about distributed </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">property rights, distributed responsibility<br /> and networked rather than </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">hierarchical processes."</span></span></span><br /><br />One of the fascinating battles taking place on the Web, (and there are a few big ones underway) is the growing war of words between the old-guard (more Web 1.0) capitalists, typified by Microsoft and SAP, and the open-source (more Web 2.0) development community. However, the acrimony seems to be largely flying in one direction.<br /><br />In a sign that the old guard may be starting to panic about highly collaborative open-source business models, Shai Agassi, president of the product and technology group at SAP, claimed that not only was Linux “not innovative” but that it represented “I.P. Socialism”. He is not the first to dredge up cold-war rhetoric to try to discredit Linux-type solutions and dissuade clients from switching. In an interview in January this year, in response to a fairly loaded question about “people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights”, Bill Gates said:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.” </span><br /><br />Hangon, is Bill seriously lumping the IP issues of the Open Source debate in with music and movie piracy? It wasn’t said overtly, but he is inferring this kind of linkage. The “incentives” that Bill is talking about are all regulatory processes that predate the Web, and this I’m afraid makes him sound more and more like yesterday’s man.<br /><br />Both of these guys are trying to draw a parallel between open-source and left wing politics that is just not there. Communism and Socialism are about central planning and imposing a system without property rights on a populace. Open Source is not about a lack of property rights, it’s about distributed property rights, distributed responsibility and networked rather than hierarchical processes. Open Source, (which really means Open-Control) is a solution born of the Internet. It is TOTALLY about Enterprise, but just not about protecting the (circa 1980’s and 90s) Enterprises.<br /><br />Not all CEO’s spin the Commie line in relation to Open Source, Jonathan Schwartz, President and COO of Sun Microsystems had this to say on the topic:<br /><br />“I believe the creation, protection and evolution of intellectual property can accelerate everyone's ability to participate in an open network...And that, surely, should be everyone's common goal with free and open source software. It's not about bringing the competition down, it's about driving global participation up.”<br /><br />http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2145809/sap-dismisses-open-source<br /><br />http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020478,39183197,00.htmSimon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19273477.post-1132836716722394802005-07-18T10:50:00.000+09:302006-04-26T01:44:35.330+09:30What's really happening at the edges of the internet...Doc Searls says: "If all of the Internet's value is at its edges, Internet connectivity itself wants to become a commodity".<br /><br />Geoffrey Moore says "What is core becomes context". Like the approx. 3 billion MP3s being shared around the world every month on file-sharing networks. Although the recording industry would hate to admit it, pop-music has become or is rapidly moving to the final stage of commoditization.<br /><br />Music is becoming valueless and ubiquitous... it has become Moore's 'context'. If anyone doesn't seriously think the iPod's major driver is not those 3 billion files, then they haven't realised that the value has shifted from the music to the device, and the best source for filling that device is not CD's and not even iTunes, (that's a sugar-pill for the record companies, to make them think they are solving the problem... - they are not.) The best source is applications like eDonkey with its 299 million downloads in 2003 alone. P2P activity now accounts for 50 to 70% of all Internet traffic. In Asia, P2P data-traffic on the Internet now averages more than 10 times that of ‘http’ web traffic.[cachelogic]<br /><br />The future is happening, and its not really a web phenomenon, or shall we say in the future it wont be seen as being a Web movement taxonomically, its a 'Pure Internet' thing, and guess where this is going... The ‘service ownership’ of typical PC based email applications like Outlook Express is not actually owned by the consumer but by ISP’s, and effectively rented to the consumer on a monthly basis. In the case of Web Mail providers like Hotmail or Yahoo, the service is given away for free to the user in exchange for personal information designed to push targeted banner advertisements inside the mail applications. However, Hotmail and Yahoo continue to ‘own’ the service.<br /><br />Even Internet Domain-Names are never truly owned by the consumer, but rented from US Government sanctioned agencies and commercial monopolies like Verisign and ICANN. Connectivity is big business Baby! But... the Big Business grasp on it won't last forever. Albert Benschop, from the University of Amsterdam frames it well: “Over the years the internet has become nearly just as stratified as the society it stems from. The exponential growth and far-reaching commercialization of the web have lead to an ever-stronger manifestation of the power structures of society in the virtual world. At present specialized computers channel the data traffic on the Internet and portals and search machines such as AOL, Google and Yahoo! dominate and exploit the market of the internet-dollars. Strongly concentrated hubs have arisen that play a crucial role in the Internet traffic. They are monster-servers, diverting their information to millions of regular web-users.”<br /><br />Watch out... because as Geoffrey Moore says, "What is core becomes context".Simon Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02533697582506649499noreply@blogger.com0