Shrunketized

Apple v Netflix II

Think Secret has reported that Apple will be offering movie rentals. I predicted this back in October, but i'm wondering how Apple will actually deliver these movies. I know I don't want to watch a movie on my computer, but how will they get onto my TV? Unless I hack into my cable box, I'm thinking the answer will lay in a new version of the Mac Mini that will hook up to your TV and wirelessly transfer movies from your desktop. That seems like the easiest path, but how much will it cost the consumer-- $600 on top of the movie cost and popcorn? Netflix has been hard at work with Tivo developing a box to deliver their movies digitally, and that's a big existing audience and a mechanism people are comfortable with. The Mini is going to have to get a lot slicker to win people over.

Who's in charge of software development?

I love Joel on Software, but this article about Development Abstraction is a little biased. It's great from the programmers' point of view-- put the programmer on a pedestal and give him everything he needs to get his job done. The reality is even in a software development company the programmer isn't the most important job in the hierarchy. Joel says it best himself that "The level a programmer works at (say, Emacs) is too abstract to support a business."

Why shouldn't it be the goal to remove impediments for every job role in the company? If that's not possible, there must be a balance so that the most needs of all employees are being satisfied. In my experience, most programmers are too myopic to direct the course of development. When it comes down to it, the best software solves the user's needs. Who knows best what those needs are? Not the programmer, who never deals with the user, and is likely on a much higher level of technical aptitude than the user.

Outside the company, it's the users themselves who should be on this pedestal. All functions within the company should cater to the users' needs. Within the company this falls on those that interact directly and translate those needs into functional goals. A more sensible heirarchy would be something like User Experience Analyst > Information Architect > User Interface Designer > Programmer. You could substitute any number of job titles, but that's the basic flow. Not that programmers are at the bottom of the heap-- I'd still put them above sales & marketing, management, human resources...but putting the programmer at the top is like suggesting that a mechanic can best design a car for human comfort.

a massive and staggeringly expensive email reading machine

From Fortune magazine: "To deliver a Web-based product line, Microsoft must build a global network of server farms that will cost 'staggering' amounts of money, says Ozzie." That's Ray Ozzie, the new hire Microsoft has pinned all its hopes on. "'The people who could build a viable services infrastructure of scale,' he says, 'are companies that have both the will and the capacity to invest staggering amounts of money - staggering amounts.'"

Web services have been talked about for years now, but they're finally starting to work on a larger scale. Implicit in web services is standards, interactivity, and a lightweight connection. Is a web service really a web service if it's just one Microsoft component talking to another Microsoft component? The popularity of a service is determined by how many ways it can connect to others and how simple and human-readable the connection is. Lock-ins don't happen because of proprietary software or legacy platforms but because the service has too many great features to do without. If a service stops performing a new one can be plugged in.

Perhaps Microsoft can build a giant server farm to house data, but their services won't succeed if they are equally massive. The key is to provide small functional components that can scale massively, not masses of functional elements that can't be reduced to their separate parts. Lighter, smaller and faster companies should win out in this space. 37Signals is constantly picked on for narrowly focusing all their development advice on the small team, but that's where the web is going. If a giant corporation like Microsoft can think and move like a small team, perhaps it can survive. Robert Scoble has some ideas on how Microsoft can do this.

The future is here!

Yes, the future is not 20 years away—maybe 20 months away. In January I was dreaming about Google voice search, and apparently it's just around the corner. The technology has been there for a while, but Google is finally trying to put it together in a way we can use. This will change the way we interact with the world around us. Mobile applications seem an obvious first step since the voice input is already in place.

Now here's what else I want. A little app I like to call "BAD DRIVER!" Someone cuts you off or does something crazy on the road-- you pull out your cameraphone, snap a picture of their license plate, then curse them out into the phone. The pic gets uploaded to a site that scans and ID's the plate, records it in the database, and attaches the audio of your berating. Totally hands off interface, but what fun to listen to later! And maybe someday your curses will even be heard by those they were intended for. If you really suck you might even get the baddest driver of the week award.

good times and bad times

Caterina Fake of Flickr says it's a bad time to start a new business. 37 Signals says it's a great time. One company is leading in their field and will likely only face more competition in the future, while the other makes their money providing services to new businesses. I'm sure that has nothing to do with it.

Robert Scoble posts an interesting question in his comments: "bloggers don’t have as much credibility as those who are paid to write and report on news. Translation: how can you fire a blogger?" Meanwhile, Ben Domenech resigns from washingtonpost.com before he could be fired. Maybe he could've just unsubscribed from himself?

Manhattan Research, Inc.

Lately i've been enjoying a 2 CD set of music by electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott, Manhattan Research, Inc. Scott led a double life as a successful commercial composer and also an inventor, and is apparently credited with inventing the music sequencer. Almost 50 years later his music sounds remarkably fresh (even used for a recent Tic Tac commercial). It's a great blend of the creative experimental nature of other early pioneers, and the catchy melodies of commercial music. The CD's come along with a great book filled with interviews and pictures of him in his enormous basement full of electronic devices. He comes across as sort of a lovable mad genius.

Only recently is he taking a place in music history, as he was incredibly secretive with his inventions. In a letter found in his personal papers he states "...with the passing of years, I guess I regret my secrecy and would like for people to know of what I accomplished." It's good stuff.

In the future

I was telling my wife that within 20 years Google will be much like the movies we see of the future. The computer will be a centralized appliance in the house that we can interact with from any room. We'll interact with it by talking to it. We'll ask Google "Who was that modern artist that painted swimming pools?" and it will return "David Hockney" in an expectedly pleasing female voice (or male, depending on your settings). "Would you like to read a biography of David Hockney?"

My wife asks, "Will it make your food for you?"

"No, it won't make your food. Not in 20 years."

"It'll also say 'Save 20% on a biography of David Hockney on Amazon.com. Would you like to receive a quote for painting services? Buy a swimming pool today, get it installed next week! Take art lessons from home.'"

Well, yeah. That's a good point. As Google transitions into new mediums, so will the ads. But i'm optimistic—I think the future holds less intrusiveness, or at least not any more than we have now. Ads will continue to become more targeted so what we hear will become more relevant and interesting to us. If they become too intrusive, we'll go elsewhere or alter the services we consume—in general we'll have more options and more power over the prominence of advertising in our lives.

When we experience intrusiveness in advertising currently, it's caused by a power imbalance between consumer and the advertiser, which is caused by lock-in and monopolies. Lock-in across many industries are beginning to unravel. Intangible goods delivered digitally, and services that are quickly and inexpensively duplicated, are becoming more difficult to keep locked in. Music, movies and books are easy to transfer to others (legally or otherwise). Independent labels are beginning to challenge the major labels. Blogs are beginning to challenge the mainstream media. VoIP is challenging the telecoms. All of these things are shifting the balance of power towards the consumer, and allowing us to dictate the terms of the agreement.

This doesn't mean that those in power aren't struggling to keep the balance the same. The RIAA and MPAA are struggling to lock down music and movies, to cripple all viewing and listening devices. The telecoms want to cripple the internet for those that can't pay. Patent laws are crippling innovation by competitors. Trademark laws are attempting to exert unreasonable control over basic language use. Those that would attempt to shift the power away from the individual belong in the Hall of Villainy.

Fortunately, the genie has left the bottle. I don't know how long it will take the villains to realize, but they are not getting it back.

Batelle's 2006

John Batelle has a great list of predictions for the coming year. I particularly like 1,8,9 and 10.

accessing your music anywhere

I'm excited about the new mp3tunes Oboe service. It creates an online storage locker for all your iTunes songs, and claims to do it with the click of one button, via a handy iTunes plugin. The service offers a free version which seems to offer a lot, and a paid version with some extra features. I'm especially interested in the "sideloading" concept where you can move songs from a partner website directly into your storage locker without downloading via a special link. After trying to set up an account, i'm a little less excited. The service, at least the Mac version, seems buggy still. After creating my account it brought me to a download page that didn't work–the download link kept taking me to the front page. After finally clicking the download tab in the menu I discovered the links there worked okay.

I downloaded two files, but there was no documentation included so I wasn't sure what to do with them. This is probably ignorance on my part, but the files have to be moved out of the mounted disk image or they won't run properly. I also didn't know how to install the plugin for iTunes–putting it in the iTunes plugin folder seemed to do nothing.

When I ran the syncing program, I entered my account info and clicked the Sync button, and it began syncing, informing me that it would take an hour per 200 songs. Unfortunately that's going to take about 35 hours. I canceled out of that action and clicked the other button, Preferences. That allowed me to choose a specific folder to sync, so I figured I could do a few albums at a time to test things out. After setting the folder, the Sync button became disabled, and I had to re-enter my password to enable the button, even though my password was still there. I selected only a few dozen songs but the syncing was still cranking away so slowly that I eventually gave up.

I have high hopes for the service, but I think i'm going to wait a couple weeks until they've worked out some of the glitches.

Will Smith—not your friend.

Will Smith is not your friend. I'm not talking about the Will Smith that fights aliens and killer robots (he seems pretty helpful and friendly), but rather the BellSouth CTO Will Smith. He needs to go in the corner with AT&T (formerly SBC) CEO Edward Whitacre. This article in the WaPo details how they want to give internet traffic priority based on who's willing to shell out the bucks. Say goodbye to your favorite two-bit weblog. Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge correctly states that "If we want to ruin the Internet, we'll turn it into a cable TV system". The telecoms want to turn the most important democratizing force in modern history into a fascist state. Nice going, telecoms.

I've added Will Smith to my new Hall of Villainy.