Electric Currents

Careers for the 21st Century

JR — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:08:12 +0000

I will sometimes be asked for advice about what type of career someone going to college should be looking toward. Why this happens, I haven’t the slightest idea. My own career has not been terribly diverse, but I do have a wide-ranging set of interests and knowledge.

Regardless, Art Carden at Stepcase Lifehack has a very well-thought out article about 21st Century Opportunities.

With five broad areas of opportunity, I think he has correctly identified some of the broad themes for the economy of the next 20 years. Beyond 20 years, the outlook is not as clear. Because of the accelerating impact of technology, some immediate careers will change greatly. For instance, he states that Product Design will have a clear value as the cost of manufacturing goods declines. What he misses is that with the decline of production cost, there will become a corresponding rise in the era of mass customization. While Design will continue to be of value, there may not be the big “wins” of Design in the past. Instead, we may have a series of rapidly changing “fads” in design. While the classic Eames chair will still have value, someone could get their chair personalized to their own specific body and comfort. Later, they would want another.

Ownership in the digital age

JR — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:15:42 +0000

Great article by Kevin Kelly at The Technium about ownership in the digital age. His contention is that ownership can be substituted with ease of access. If one can as easily (or more easily) access a digital good (music, ebook, video), is there any need to ‘own’ that good?

This is an interesting thought and he makes some persuasive points.

Apple and the Peril of Success

JR — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:30:04 +0000

I’ve (somewhat enviously) been following the success of Apple and their iPhone/iTouch success with the applications store. Lots of good programs there and many of the small makers are receiving remarkable amounts of money from their creations. This has been undeniably good for the software makers and the iPhone community. More importantly, Apple has provided a single, convenient and reliable source for acquiring software for their device.

There have been some drawbacks to this. First was that Apple was taking 30% of the price on any of the “for pay” applications. When the initial wave of applications hit and about half were free and almost all of the remainder was priced under $5, this wasn’t much of an issue. After all, how much was actually going to be involved with this App Store? It couldn’t really amount to much revenue when compared to the devices themselves.

Then we started hearing about the success of the iPhone 3G and with it the success of the Apps Store. Five millions iPhones quickly sold and just as quickly came the reports of 100 million applications downloaded. Whoa. That’s a lot of apps, even if half were free. And the party hasn’t stopped. Sales from the Apps Store appear to be continuing at that same pace as new iPhone buyers discover the universe of software they can download.

Watching this and comparing it to the rest of Apple now has me worried. Sure the obvious reason for concern is the widely reported instances in which Apple has denied applications for the Apps Store. There is also the developer concerns about the wide coverage of the very restrictive parts of the NDA. But that isn’t what worries me.

The real source of concern is the success that the Apps Store has had in providing the very convenient and controlled single place to get applications for Apple’s devices. This just feeds into the Apple tendency to want to tightly control and optimize the experience for the user. They want to make everything so smooth and easy for us; while taking a reasonable profit for themselves.

Apple fans are long aware that one of the problems with being an Apple user is that it is more difficult to find software for their preferred platform. Sure, they are comfortable with downloading and installing applications from the makers, but it isn’t easy to find software when most retail outlets only carry a tiny amount of Mac software, if any.

Now we start seeing the way that the Apps Store might change this. What if there was an Apps Store that Apple managed for Mac software? Just like with the iPhone, it could easily tap into your iTunes account for billing information. Apple could control the offered software and insure that there was not hostile malware that was offered. Wider exposure to the Mac community would be good for many software publishers and they wouldn’t have to fight with the software distributors for shelf space in retail stores.

But this leads even further to the ghettoization of the Mac just when it is starting to grow in popularity. Just as more people are buying Macs and there is a growing demand for Mac software that the retail stores will want to serve, Apple could be taking in all the applications to the App Store, leaving no reason for retail distribution. And Apple would modestly take a slice of the sale price (albeit less than the normal distribution chain would). (Incidentally, getting a slice of the revenue that independent developers create has to be something that would make Microsoft salivate enviously.)

So a Mac Apps Store is unlikely at this point. What will happen next?

Just recently, Apple instructed retailers to remove AppleTV displays and get ready for something new starting today (September 30). AppleTV was a nice front end to the iTunes store and brought the elegant Apple experience to the HDTV, but it never really caught on with the public. Popular with the hacking community, many people have expanded AppleTV’s capabilities greatly from the original product.

What if Apple brought the App Store to AppleTV? Because the platform hasn’t been successful to date, it is a good test area for whether adding the Apps Store will expand its market. If successful there, the Apps Store concept could be expanded to the Mac itself.

Let’s see what happens.

The value of networks

JR — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:40:33 +0000

It has long been an Internet truism that there are very strong “network effects” present on the Internet. They have been playing out prior to and since the creation of the Internet itself.

By network effects, I’m speaking about the exponential increase in value that a communications medium gains as more people use it. We saw this very clearly in the pre-commercial Internet era with the multiple separate e-mail services like Compuserve, The Source and even BBS services like Exec-PC and The Well. Each allowed you to easily communicate with other users on the service. Communicating outside that service was initially impossible, and then became merely very difficult.

It was when the interconnections became trivial with the commoditization of the Internet that e-mail became a valuable business (and personal) tool and usage exploded.

This repeats over and over again. Part of AOL’s longevity and success was the “all my friends are there” argument from family members.

The current battles between differing social networks like MySpace, Facebook and a host of other small fry are just another echo of this continuing process. Just like with AOL before it, much of the attraction of one service over another are your own friends that are already present on one system or another. Not that you can’t communicate across the borders between them, but like with the early e-mail, it is more difficult and more limited in what can be exchanged.

The latest element of the competition is about how you can get some of that information out of a service and allow it to appear elsewhere. Projects and services to enable this are are going by a number of different names. Data Availabilit (from MySpace), Facebook Connect and Friend Connect (from Google). Each is claiming to be more open than the other, but all are ultimately about keeping users inside their “walled garden” so the company can keep harvesting more information about you and selling access to you as their real product (they are, after all ‘advertising supported’).

Mike Arrington at Techchrunch, has a good opinion piece about the questions revolving around Data Portability. Mostly he is responding to a post from Robert Scoble about Google’s ability to get that data from their Facebook to their own system. Mike makes a strong case that your information (postings, addresses, friends lists, etc.) on those social network sites should be under your own control and you should be free to allow it to go to other sites (apologies if that is a horrible simplification of his position).

Robert replied making the point that someone’s friends list isn’t just their own, but the joint possession of the individual participants. A consideration should be that members of your friends list may not want to appear elsewhere. He further points out that there is an inherent conflict in what Mike was wanting. Mike wants to take information with him, but it conflicts with the desire of others to keep control of their own information.

All the conversation and argument are really talking about the network effect and ways to make it better without losing control of the information that is shared. In many ways, both Mike and Robert are correct. The real value is in controlling the sharing of the information. We ultimately want the user to be in control of that information. Whether this is by some federated system that neutrally distributes this information or by some other means, the network value will greatly increase for the company that figures out how to do this without placing a burden on their users.

How the iPhone will challenge the Blackberry

JR — Sun, 11 May 2008 19:22:55 +0000

Great article about how the iPhone can compete with the Blackberry at Daring Fireball. He thinks deeper into the issue than the typical fanboy rantings for either platform.

Further, he is looking at the iPhone as it currently exists, not with the putative promises and unknown success of the upcoming improvements to the device.

Law to Limit Tracking of Clicks

JR — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:22:53 +0000

According to the New York Times, Richard Brodsky of the New York Assembly has proposed a bill that would forbid Web companies from using personal information (including clicks) for advertising to them without consent.

He states that this is in response to constituents’ concerns raised with the Google/DoubleClick deal. Not surprisingly, Microsoft is encouraging him in going forward with this bill (though we’ll have to see how their tune changes of the Yahoo deal goes through).

This strikes at the heart of the current means of monetizing web services. While I can’t say that I like being tracked, so far a combination of AdBlock and respect for the sites has worked well enough for me.

Walking robot

JR — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:09:36 +0000

Remarkable video at Gizmodo showing the Boston Dynamics “BigDog” walking robot. Particularly amazing is the way that it recovers from disturbances or bad leg placement. Take a look about 1/2 way through the video to see it brought to its knees by a slip on ice and it still recovers.

Gizmodo response to prank fallout

JR — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:48:50 +0000

I thought that Gizmodo was going to keep quiet about their prank at the Consumer Electronic Show. After all, what would they have to gain with any sort of apology. At best, it would appear to be self-serving and insincere. At worst, an apology would to be part of the prank itself and just another way of getting more attention for their web site.

I had thought that they were wise in keeping their mouths shut and letting the whole thing blow over.

But they couldn’t leave the matter alone. Today Gizmodo responded and appeared to claim that they shouldn’t be ashamed of what they did. They point to notable jokers in the tech industry like Apple founder Steve Wozniak.

But more amazing, they claim some moral high ground because they are not in a position of overly respecting the companies they cover. They point out part of what they do is turning a skeptical eye on the claims of those same companies. If they were to censor themselves because they were concerned about losing favor from a company, they would lose any respect and reliability as a news source.

They also use an ad hominen attack to blame those who have accepted gifts from companies (paid junkets to Japan by Nikon was their example) or who do advertising work for the companies they cover. No doubt that those other journalists who have misbehaved should be
called on it, but this does not excuse the bad manners of the part of
Gizmodo’s reporter.

They then go on to point to their own excellent coverage when given an opportunity to interview Bill Gates at the show. They felt that their interview was good journalism on a par with any other medium. I do note, however, that they did not first hit Bill Gates with a pie and then expect him to sit down for their interview.

The prank was a rude thing to do and the CES management was fully in its rights to bar that reporter from future events. Complaining “can’t you take a joke”, which is essentially what the article is claiming, is only an excuse for what is obvious misbehavior. Though you can’t kowtow to the companies you cover, or engage in any form of thinly disguised payola, you do have to treat the subjects of your articles with respect. This was clearly not done by the prankster.

The only way to respond to such juvenile behavior is with the traditional admonishment: “Just grow up and act like an adult.”

Maturity in the Blogging community

JR — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:10:15 +0000

I don’t know why I didn’t comment on the Gizmodo prank at the Consumer Electronic Show. It seemed like a cute irreverant bit if behavior by some young people.

However, from the broader Blogging community standpoint, it was a black eye. John Biggs at Crunchgear has a much better response. This wasn’t something to be proud of nor should we honor those who participated in the prank. This may well have damaged the hard-won respect that other bloggers have spent so much effort establishing.

I don’t think that the damage is irreparable, but there will be consequences that we will see play out over the next year.

Detailed iPhone review

JR — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:15:13 +0000

Ars Technica has released one of it always excellent and detailed reviews; in this case about the iPhone.

Fifteen pages detailing the physical strengths and weaknesses of the iPhone and the software triumphs and failures. It includes a remarkable durability test that includes everything from being stepped on to dropping it from a 3rd story window.

Their balanced verdict is that the iPhone is a mixed bag. In the areas where the iPhone excels, it is at a level far above all the competition. The failures, like e-mail, appear to almost be an afterthought compared to the other functions. Because of the incomplete appearance of the mail application, there is hope that it will be greatly improved in a later software update.

Me? I’ve been using a Nokia N800 for about 6 months and recently changed my Bluetooth-connected cell phone to one which can use an HSDPA network connection in addition to WiFi. It gives me a lot of what the iPhone can do and is getting more and more software released for it by the week. I’ve got time to see what the iPhone can become.