Jeremy Allaire: Content Issues

Maven Networks Launches

Mon, 22 Sep 2003 15:44:05 GMT

A company I have been working closely with over the past six-months, has finally taken the wraps off its products. Maven Networks today launched an exciting new end-to-end system for delivering high-quality video applications to broadband-connected PCs. I've written up some thoughts on Maven Networks.

Internet Convergence 2.0

Fri, 22 Aug 2003 13:54:23 GMT

There's an opinion / trends article I wrote posted on Macromedia's DevNet website. It gives a cursory overview of ten trends that are driving a new Internet convergence. Enjoy and would love comments!

Nick Bradbury is at it again

Tue, 10 Jun 2003 02:47:49 GMT

I just learned about Nick Bradbury's latest project, FeedDemon, an RSS news aggregator. Nick's work in the web development tools space has been pioneering, with HomeSite being the most popular HTML text-editor ever released, and TopStyle, the standard productivity tool for CSS editing. Versions of both HomeSite and TopStyle are included with Dreamweaver MX. (Interesting side-note: HomeSite is what brought Allaire and Macromedia together in the first place --- Kevin Lynch was looking to partner with the leading HTML editor vendor (Allaire, as we had recently brought on Nick and HomeSite).

I'm really excited to be using a Nick Bradbury product again! This is Nick's first attempt at what I'll call an end-user personal productivty tool (e.g. the kind of stuff that only Microsoft is supposed to be able to build because of their dominance with Office).

Comments on LinkedIn

Wed, 04 Jun 2003 13:59:02 GMT

Gory details of social network software More good discussion on Joi's site about LinkedIn.

.....But to scale beyond the early adopters, especially with competition, these services have to do something valuable and create a good user experience. LinkedIn's core service -- trusted business introductions -- is useful but not, I think, a killer app......

[via Werblog]

I agree with Kevin, and would even add that it's not clear whether even LinkedIn offers any value at all. I've got hundreds of connections through it, but have yet to receive or use the service for any form of business introduction --- which is now 50% of my business. It looks more like a "who's who" ego party than a useful service (at this point).

No stand-alone market for Wi-Fi access

Mon, 19 May 2003 13:49:11 GMT

An SVP from Verizon commented in a Q&A in the Boston Globe (no link, it's behind a paid subscription system like NYTimes.com) that he didn't believe there was a standalone market for Wi-Fi access:

Q. Any chance you would offer WiFi as a stand-alone service unconnected to Verizon Online DSL or dial-up Net service?
A. We don't view WiFi as a service per se. It is an access technology. It is something our customers want [in order] to be untethered from the network. We have yet to see a business model where WiFi could operate as a stand-alone business.

Lots of other good tidbits in here about their Pay-Phone-based Wi-Fi network deployment, but this notable comment underscores the fact that Wi-Fi will be like the air we breath, and thus part of our commodity communications/utility bills. Incidentally, this is exactly the model that more advanced markets (Japan) are using, where broadband+VOIP+WiFi are now common and affordable.

Blogging from Nokia 3650

Tue, 13 May 2003 02:38:29 GMT

Russ reviews a J2ME blogging app for the 3650: Blo Russ reviews a J2ME blogging app for the 3650: BlogPlanet Rules: J2ME Blogging MIDlet for 3650s, excerpt: "This is a...

[via fullasagoog.com full roast blend]

Great intro to a powerful new J2ME app for my Nokia 3650 camera phone. Will give it a try and report back. Most interesting tidbit in his article that was news to me was that the Nokia 3650 is one of the only phones with support for J2ME Media and Messaging APIs, which give the Java client access to your camera device. That's great!

Broadband Price-War

Mon, 12 May 2003 12:20:34 GMT

"We don't think there is going to be a price war," said Niraj A. Gupta, an analyst with Salomon Smith Barney.

Huh?

Verizon: Pay-Phones as HotSpot

Mon, 12 May 2003 12:16:20 GMT

From Broadband Intelligence:

Incumbent telco Verizon is slated to announce 5/13 its by-now well-covered DSL service price cuts, along with the launch of its MSN portal for DSL. Verizon is also slated to announce that it will equip its pay phones to operate as WiFi hot spots, a move previewed by Vice Chmn./Pres. Lawrence Babbio in a 5/9 speech at a wireless security conference.

This is both interesting news, and something that has been rumored for a long-time. Local telephone companies have tens of thousands of DSL-capable payphones that can easily be turned into Wi-Fi HotSpots. This is also how BT is rolling out hotspots in London. It's a clever, cost-effective way to ramp Wi-Fi availability in cities.

Wi-Fi Home Media Networks

Fri, 09 May 2003 18:18:15 GMT

This editorial from Patrick Houston at ZDNet provides good analysis on the challenges in creating a standard for PC - CE media convergence. He talks about several emerging products based on Intel's Digital Media Adapter (DMA) reference design, which provides a standard approach for moving media between PCs and existing TV's and Stereo's using 802.11b. The most telling part of his editorial is his skepticism around the PC and CE industries working together:

"I'm now painfully aware of just how different the PC and consumer electronics industries are, and why those differences promise to make a home-networking standard so hard to set. Despite the demands of consumers like you and me, it could take years.

The differences may best be expressed simply by comparing the PC and the TV. The PC is a complicated, multipurpose, upgradeable piece of electronic equipment that lasts maybe four years at most. The TV is a simple, single-purpose, non-upgradeable device that lasts for about 10 years.

PC vendors are accustomed to moving quickly in a rapidly changing environment. Consumer electronics makers live in a world where product decisions may haunt them for a decade or more. You can see how these different circumstances would inform their different approaches to industry standards.

There are other differences that will determine how these two industries play with each other, too. Microsoft and Intel hold enough sway to move PC players toward accommodation. The consumer electronics industry has no force like that--not even Sony wields that kind of power.

It won't help either that CE makers are wary of Microsoft. They don't want to be bound by the ongoing software-licensing fees, nor the undue influence, that Microsoft imposes on, say, Dell, Gateway, or HP.

AS A RESULT, bringing these two industries to consensus on a home-networking standard will be like negotiating an arms control treaty between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. at the height of the Cold War."

Talk by NTT DoCoMo Managing Director of Strategy

Sat, 26 Apr 2003 00:03:00 GMT

Takeshi Natsuno, Managing Director for DoCoMo Strategy

Keynote this morning from NTT executive, talking about i-Mode.

He's showing us subscriber data for wireless Internet in the world. NTT dominates in the world, and then next five are Japan and Korea. Everyone else, including Europe and US are tiny in comparison. For many reasons, this hasn't been repeated in other geographies.

He outlines the functional footprint of the 504 series. Interesting, the Nokia 3650 which is $150 in the US now has more functionality. He's showing powerful Java-based games, it's pretty sweet. He says the game software industry for phones is becomming as big as older game industries.

They just announced the series 505 phones. He's really pushing Macromedia Flash as the major breakthrough for their phones. But these devices have a richer display, 1.3 megapixel camera, memory stick, and bio-metric authentication input device! Phew. The Flash demo's are really nice --- smooth, vector graphics compared to the nastly bitmappy Java apps that he just showed.

38 million active iMode subscribers. More and more iMode has VPN support and can integrate into corporate environments. Therer are over 2,300 official commercial content/service providers in their network, with over 62,000 voluntary iMode sites. His 38 million number means that they are the biggest ISP in the world, now bigger than AOL.

Consumers pay for devices and access because they've made it safe and easy for content providers to provision services into their network. It becomes a virtuous circle as subscriber growth happens more content companies and higher quality content comes online.

They went from zero subscribers and content to this world given three key strategies:

1) Technology. Selected best available content technology -- real HTML (cHTML), MIDI, Java, Flash.

2) Business model. Designed business model around content service providers, not for the needs of telecom operators or handset manufacturers. Micro-payments model, user friendly portal for content selection, easy install and use process.

3) Marketing. Drove marketing around ordinary people, appealing to a mainstream audience not techies.

What he's not noting is the degree to which a) their incredible centralized control enabled the rapid and easy establishment of standards, and b) the advanced nature of their installed network technology enabled them to move much faster than US and European markets.

More data. Aggregate ARPU has stayed strong only because of iMode. Voice ARPU has continued to decline while data ARPU has made up for that decline.

Two years ago, strategic decision was made to add Java to the phones. They now have 17.4 million active Java subscribers, with over 600 Java app suppliers. There is also a market for Java-based corporate applications. There are 6,000 independent Java content/app sites available over iMode. Despite Sun, they made Java in devices successful.

As a result, they say significant packet usage boosted by Java handsets, in addition to higher value/priced applications where they get a commision. Latest Java phone subscribers are using 4x the packet usage than normal phone users.

He expects that with the introduction of Flash in their phones, they'll see a very significant boost to packet usage beyond Java.

Overall, digital content marketplace on iMode is about $1B in 2002, and the percent of customers paying for digital content is about 53% of subscribers.

He's comparing Japan versus other markets. He says it's fundamentally about a content-centric value chain all the way through the model. In other markets, the fragmentation in operator, handset vendor and content value chain makes coordination difficult. Operating a controlled but dynamic eco-system is the basis for NTT's success.

Going forward, always trying to improve the evolution in the handset and network capabilities; in content capabilities; evolution of the core user experience. But these evolving dimensions need to be synchronized.

What about 3G and Broadband?

The network speed component is only one dimension of the value-chain. The entire eco-system needs to evolve with it, and that can only happen when enough user critical mass is available. It's back to the chicked-and-egg problem that they faced when they started iMode.

On their 3G platform, they offer MPEG4 video, and it's evolving into being a multi-point video phone and better platform for content. 384Kbps currently. But they only have 380,000 users of 3G today because not enough applications have been developed for it. But they're driving customers over with a cost-savings value proposition, and then layering in specific 3G content services. 505i phone is the first to come close to enabling 3G applications. But it will take 3 years to get to 2 million users, largely do to lower area coverage.

Predictions:

1) US/Europe follow iMode model with content-centric value chain model.
2) Big migration from 2G to 3G starts in Japan in 2004.
3) Deeper convergence between Internet and telco
4) De factor standards most important.

My question: will devices evolve to be true consumer electronics devices that combine stereo music, DV/camera and video communications, eventually displacing portable music and camera markets?

He thinks it will in the long run, but it's no where near making this transition today. The music and camera capabilities are very far behind, and are really mostly applied in the special context of mobile communications. That will change over time.

Building the Infrastructure for Broadband, Panel

Thu, 24 Apr 2003 18:35:39 GMT

Jeff Huber, VP of Tech for eBay

eBay generates $681 per second. How does ebay compare to other commerce players? They're now 31st largest commerce provider, bigger than GAP, ToysRUs, and others.

Where do they focus? Front end (e.g. new and scarce products), end of life, and used/vintage products. Asser that this is nearly a $2 trillion market opportunity. Continue to see strong growth in most categories, but big in cars, home and garden, clothing and accessories. Operate 27 sites globally. Strong international growth.

<jeremy>Not sure what the relationship of this is to broadband infrastructure?</jeremy>

They're seing 6.5 million web service API calls per day! Sending 21 million emails a day, conducting 80 million searches a day. 30% of inbound products are coming in through virtual supply chain --- e.g. web services.

With regards to broadband, it's the always-on nature that drives the nature and velocity of usage of eBay, and the ability to have an immediate, notification driven relationship with buyers and sellers. From a bandwidth perspective, they can really improve the richness of the product views and details with broadband focused content. And broadband empowers more individuals to create eBay-based businesses.

They'd like to become an alternative distribution channel for any manufacturer or retailer, and using multiple pricing models, including fixed price increasing dramatically.

Question: web services adoption; how's it growing/going? what standards are you using and are you ahead of the standards?

We haven't been as high-profile about PR, but activities are ahead of expectations in terms of adoption. Went for a least common denominator approach --- e.g. it's not SOAP, but XML/HTTP and a RESTful API.

Question: what impact on broadband content will happen?

I think one concept that came early today is the idea of a tipping poing, but they're still only at 50% of their end-users having broadband, so sellers are reluctant to use broadband rich media content. Typically, the more expensive and advanced product areas are using broadband ready content.

Question: how has the reputation system on eBay supported commerce?

One of the key issues they see is customer safety around the experience. People just don't trust the system in general. Trust and safety systems, including reputation, are a big part of that. Fraud management systems are a part of that, too.

David Labuda -- CEO Portal Software.

Broadband will surprise us. The apps that take off were never predicted. Examples --- eBay and commerce; SMS and Mobile; ring-tones and mobile. Nobody knows what the killer apps will be. Must be able to launch services quickly and inventively, and fast experimentation.

The ability to intuitively price these new premium services is a real challenge, especially for communications companies used to just charging for data rates and time. There really isn't a mapping b/w bandwidth used and value of the service. This is a real sea change for a lot of these companies. This is value-based pricing. This could enable QoS models and cost structure savings to increase margin on high-value items.

Security and fraud prevention is a major issue still. This is paramount because otherwise the communications companies will have terrible experiences and will back away.

Question: In favor of value-based pricing, but some of the pricing will be above and below the cost of bits.

Lots of people will try and beat the system, and you can try and reduce that problem, but it won't be the norm. Agree there will be a variety of low and high value transactions, but that for consumers you can't have bandwidth-based pricing.

<jeremy>We're mostly talking about the mobile market, and the drive to paid content for services rather than raw data as the unit for pricing/billing. The discussion could have benefitted from this clarification, as many people think we're talking about broadband suppliers charging for access to third-party apps and content</jeremy>

Rick Rashid -- SVP Research at Microsoft

It's been 10 years since Mosaic. It was really a tool for people to interact with computers at remote locations. Driving change will be computers interacting with computers, and then servicing the consumer. So with broadband in the home, the computers need to be intelligent and able to get data and services on the network all the time.

Today TV is more like browsing and you get data on the fly. Increasingly, machines in the home wil pull content over the network and assemble programming for you on the fly, when you want it. We've seen this ourselves in our own research environments. For example, TerraServer went from being a browser app to a data service, and more and more its apps communicating with the the server for data.

Effecitvely, what the user sees are specific apps/services that are local on their machines, with communication and data happening in the background using XML web services. So this is the real change and trend, this new distributed computing infrastructure. Next is defining how we do trust, communication, discovery, and so on.

Question: value of the data is the real deal, but the communications linkages are not the value?

Yes, that's right. You're seeing very low costs for data communications --- dark fiber is getting dirt cheap. What's the real value? It's in what you do with the data and services around it.

Question: doesn't the web services strategy, with horizontal services, wont they also be commoditized?

Yes, that's right. You'l get to a point...what is the specific value of the info/service you're providing? If it's unique you can drive some revenue from it. In many cases, if anyone can do it, then it will be a commodity. Web services does help this commoditization. The other side of the coin is that it enables new kinds of apps to be built. People are building data federations --- linking past databases using web services, creating a facade of data services with higher-order value (e.g. aggregation and re-composition of services).

Question: how does one maintain their brand identity in the web services space?

eBay (Jeff Huber) -- right now its additive, not detracting. This is mostly on their supply-side versus consumer side.

Question: are consumers comfortable with computers acting on their behalf?

Paul Florack (VeriSign) It is a key issue, and trust and authentication are crucial for consumer acceptance. We'll leverage certificates for verification across a number of fronts involving web services.

Rick -- we've been concerned about this notion of there being no one place that can be trusted. consumers will trust some things and not others, and thus defining web services security, is the need for multiple forms of certification and proof, and the idea of federation of trust, so you don't have to rely on a single trust mechanism.

Panel with Glaser, Seigelman, Eric Schmidt -- Broadband Applications

Thu, 24 Apr 2003 16:30:04 GMT

We have a distinguished group of panelists.

Russ Seigelman -- Kleiner-Perkins, ran MSN for Microsoft
Bob Meyers -- President of CNBC
Salvador Arias -- IBM consulting, communications practice
Rob Glaser (via video) -- RealNetworks CEO
Eric Schmidt (via video) -- CEO of Google

Thoughts from each panelist.

Russ -- big believers in broadband. what happens next? hard to know. what's going to happen to usage? broadband drives more use of the Internet. believes that 1:1 video calls will be a big growth driver, will happen in mobile and at home. business model of broadband is different --- lots of infrastructure investment will mean that there will be more tolls in front of the consumer. it's the only way this will happen.

Eric -- the industry has been in a disaster for 2-3 years. the issue has to do with the fact that computers are getting more powerful, and the value equation hasn't kept up with PC capability. great thing about broadband is that it's the only technology that can meet the capacity of PC/CPUs. mostly broadband has to do with persistence of connection (always on aspect) means a very different usage. last year world switched from analog to digital devices in the consumer world. new generation of digital devices, combined with broadband persistent connection, is the killer app. vast majority of broadband adoption will be non-traditional, self-published audio and video. result will be new works of art.

Bob -- work at CNBC, part of NBC, part of GE. seek out environments where there are new challenges. challenge of working on point-to-point, interactive versus broadcast world. who's gonna pay for Internet delivered content? who's gonna make the transition from traditional media into networked, IP broadband environment? in the old day you have a dumb receiver (TV), receiving from a dumb but efficient network (VHF, Cable). now the receiver and the network have more intelligence. and the programming itself has a lot of intelligence.

Rob -- want to add to the comments already discussed. Real's focus is on delivering a/v apps on the Internet. started with narrowband, but focus was to design for the broadband world. our sense is that in the mid-term, the medium will have the same transformative impact that cable had over broadcast, in terms of impact on business and programming models. Real sees growth from dozens of channels that are profitable, to tens of thousands of profitable new channels. Result will be increase in consumption. There will be a substitution effect. Global medium, no channel or spectrum constraints, spans consumer and business equally. Takes issue with Eric's idea that it won't be traditional programming/video that has distribution. Real is now broadcasting 50 MLB games live over the network today, way more capacity than any cable provider. ABC news is now doing 24/7 live news, all delivered over the Internet. This is meaningful from a traditional media distribution perspective.

Salvador -- still focused on what's happening with the pipes and the economics of consumer adoption. four key factors: 1) competitive dynamics b/w suppliers are driving prices/offers down, 2) need to have enough bandwidth to enable compelling apps (e.g. above 1.5MBs, esp video centric apps), 3) pricing elasticity having an impact, lower cost structures helping, higher demand equates to economies of scale 4) government intervention --- what will happen with government support to drive adoption; still uncertain, mostly industry driven now. momentum is building for government supported investment protection (e.g. tax breaks, subsidies, etc.).

My question --- original programming, what will it be, will new companies emerge.

Rob. Lots of tries during dot com era, and most tries were too early. Will play like cable tv, like early days when MTV and others started with low-cost programming. Even ESPN and CNN were very parsimonious with cost structure. Kinds of programming --- number one thing that you can do that you couldn't do in the past, is to add interactivity as an intrinsic component to the video. Customization of programming, personalized information tools. Other applications include community integration and real-time communications around the programming. Social environment in addition to a programmed environment.

Bob. Do you want to make it a business? It's hard to make a business out of a much smaller niche service than we have today with large-scale media already. As far as adding elements of interactivity, to realy create a new channel that will be video based, person-to-person; not sure how to do it, how to find it, but he can't see a way to a breakthrough that this will be a new business for them.

Russ. There are now cable channels that are connected to live events on the Internet --- polling, video, community interaction.

Question: how much control will consumers have over timing of viewing of programming? hard to imagine Tivo'ing CNBC, he says. need to watch it live. says the key for broadcast is getting people to want to see it live.

Rob. RealityTV interesting use case. Doesn't have script format like other programming; it's the environment where media companies are combating traditional programming constraints; aggresive integration of marketing and advertising into programming. Media companies will integrate marketing/ads into programming to combat Tivo style recording where you can skip advertisements.

Russ. Time-shifting will work and people will pay for it.

Question: what will happen with paid content?

Rob. We jumped into paid content big time. As advertising online collaposed, broadband grew, so the only business model became paid content, with a set of free content around it. Pragmatic approach today. 900,000 paid subscribers with a broad range of paid content. Free consumption is still there and promotion and advertising supported, and its at an all time high in use. These two models reinforce one another, because the free model creates an audience, which in turns drives more paid premium content, which in turns draws more people to the medium. A la carte in music is just about to happen, its the play to save the music industry.

Eric. He disagrees with a few things. Says he's a huge fan of CNBC. Majority of broadband entertainment will be ad supported media. The advertising model is broken because of lack of ability to do sophisticated targetting. Tivo model enables the ability to interlace targetted advertisements. Online delivery in general supports this. High-levels of personalization will mean a fragmenting of audiences, with a deeper mixture of blended advertising, marketing and programming (as Rob suggests). Sees a huge change brought on by precision in advertising, and this is the revolutionary change on broadcast.

Question: cost of technology and running a media system is still extremely high, much higher than even labor costs. Couldn't break even on their projects.

Rob. Two different cost drivers. One thing you saw in the bubble was that there was lots of capital, and so people were used to spending tons of new capital. Real change since then and people aren't willing to do this so are looking for outsourced usage because its more cost efficient for the broadcaster/supplier. Second thing is the rapid drop in bandwidth cost. This variable cost is getting cheaper and cheaper, dropping 50% per year. And it's accelerating. So things like video on demand are now becomming feasible.

Russ. It's true at the backbone, but not at the end-points. This is still too costly and for not enough speed.

Rob. The guys going bankrupt are the CLECs, but the ILEC/encumbant, they're doing fine, and actually are growing and profitable. Those price points are a chokepoint on growth. This is a glass is 2/3 full situation. Broadband growth is happening. Cable guys are nailing their numbers every quarter. They're not seing a saturation at $50/month. We'd love to see $20/month and the dramatic growth that would happen with that. But this is a temporary inhibitor, and we're still seeing strong growth. Government should have a policy to drive prices down with subsidies, and yes, two player oligopolies don't price compete.

Question: broadband is turning the communications and media industry inside out. And that it's not having a lot of relevance for corporations?

IBM guy is talking about how all is good...not sure what he's really talking about....trying to incorporate IBM OnDemand marketing pitch...not connected....

Question: we're really dealing with duopoly. isn't the real issue price? won't there be real price competition.

Russ. The real competition will be from wireless for the last-mile, perhaps powerline. Real question is whether there is a price umbrella that will drive demand? We're doing well now in terms of adoption, but it's still a long way before we get to 70% penetration. Some scenarios could come in and really change the model, such as WiFi mesh networks. Mostly theory now, but could happen quickly with real business model innovation.

Eric. If you look at the adoption rate for tech as a proxy for the future, one of the fastest adoption curves is 802.11b/g. Everyone is embedding this uniformly --- MANs, corporations, homes, etc. Still some sharing, billing issues with mesh networks. It's pretty clear that the change to add the third wire will be distruptive, and will affect the pricing model in unanticipated ways. The way to get it down under $10 will be by users bearing some of the capital costs, and then participating in the mesh network.

Rob. These new environments become real new platforms. For example, I picked up a Cisco ATA router and have a VoIP phone device, and it really works. This is one of a number of apps that switch over to the broadband pipe. Big fields like education and health care could switch over to this medium.

Salvador. Telco thinks, if I got to an IP based platform, can I really simplify my cost structure positively. Lots of investment in their back haul and there's a concern about a displacment impact.

Question: the conversation has been around innovation around broadband, and talking about continuous video streams. the Internet showed that a very servicable pipe happened when the browser happened and people had power at the end-point, and the innovation was around what you could do at the end-point, not the pipe itself. real innovation is in the richer combination of media, communications, interactivity at the end-point.

Eric. There are a couple of historic transformations. The cost of published information --- any media type --- have dropped dramatically because of the digital revolution. How do we get more useful media? useful is in the eye of the beholder, and there will be thousands of capabilities. Blogging is the other trend, which is a constant stream of thousands of perspective. The Internet model gives the end-user more power and this is the real transformative impact on the broadband media world. On another note, people are using broadband to transfer to physical media -- e.g. CD and DVD burning.

Rob. DVD and CD burning, etc. The role that broadband plays in catalyzing media delivery in and around the home. Once you have it in the home, it gives the user much more control to redistribute to fixed media, to devices, to get it to other fixed end-points (e.g. stereo and TV).

Question: how many users will we need for the dramatic impact to society?

Critical mass will be 50% of households.

Question: how do you se this playing out in a nice near-term number --- say 2008? what will we be saying?

Russ. It depends on what your expectations are for the outcome. Maybe I'm just a dreamer. I want to walk around everywhere and have a video phone and have it be high-quality and everywhere. We'll be there after 2010. It must mean that the majority of people have that. It's not a 2008 kind of thing.

Bob. It doens't matter. We've reached a tipping point. The comparison between TV to Cable change isn't appropriate. We're talking about a communications medium, a revolution, becuase it's two-way. The things people do on broadband they already do on narrowband. Broadband just lets me do it better. Nothing radical happens in the next five years, we'll just keep evolving and the network effect will take hold.

Eric. In 2008, we'll all live in a parallel world. At the same time, a subset of us will have new digital device with all of the worlds information available immediately, on the device. I think there will be many thousands of chanells, derivative of what we see today, but highly personalized, and the vast majority will be small entities, with small audiences. Much more information and end-user empowerment.

Salvador. 2008 the cable world will have significant improvements, such as one network that does IP, video, voice, etc. It will clearly wipe-out dial-up and a broadband IP majority in the US. It's not going to be video as we think of it, lots of community oriented stuff, real-time communications, gaming oriented content. The world will be more on demand for us. Broadband will get there.

Rob. There will be multi-channel access to video and programming. He shares Eric's vision of the portable revolution, with highly reliable, caching enabled devices, driven off WiFi hotspots. Financial markets will see a great come back because of the inevitable progress of the Internet.

Working with Dave Winer

Thu, 24 Apr 2003 03:18:15 GMT

Dave and I caught up last week over lunch at Henrietta's Table, a nice lunch and meeting spot at the Charles Hotel. He was one of the first victims of my new Nokia 3650 device (left picture was beamed to my PC when I was within range).

As he noted about our conversation, we worked together in the past on the early genesis of "web services" as found in WDDX and XML-RPC. That was a fun time, and it's rewarding to see these concepts flourish on the Web today. One thing that both WDDX and XML-RPC had in common was that both used relatively simple data models, which made them more readable, interoperable and easy to implement.

Now that Dave's back east and at Harvard, we've got lots of good connections to make, as he noted.

WiFi versus 3G

Wed, 16 Apr 2003 19:26:17 GMT

3G.co.uk picked up on a report from German market research firm Metrinomics:

"WLAN will establish itself as the dominant mobile wireless infrastructure within the next five years at 3G’s expense according to a report published by Berlin based market researcher Metrinomics. Almost 90% of participants in the study also believe that WLAN will be the infrastructure of choice should their employers decide to implement an in-house infrastructure solution within the next five years."

Lots of debate on this, but it's nice to see more and more analysts stretching to this conclusion.

AOL gets videophone religion

Mon, 14 Apr 2003 14:18:51 GMT

AOL gets videophone religion

AOL Tests Video Instant Messaging [Slashdot]

OK - so since AOL refused to open up the AIM protocol and stops folks like Jabber from inter-connecting their IM system to "the rest of us" - they've come up with a sneaky way of moving forward.

Currently in beta testing, the new AOL feature will enable the service's subscribers to activate an additional pane on their IM client. Within that pane, users can record video clips of themselves via a Web cam, and then send that clip to the buddy with whom they're chatting. Users will have to click to open each new clip they receive.

AOL agreed to the limitations of their "advanced multimedia messaging" - as long as they were the predominant IM client. So they've instituted "push-to-talk" - which is really all that can be done today, as opposed to keeping a real-time video connection on all the time. This sort of videophone compromise will get them into the game, as apparently Microsoft has struck a deal with Logitech to co-brand their Video Companion software.

As many times as I told people that videophoning would be the killer app of broadband, I was told "it can't be done". Well now it is. Though it won't ever be more than 20% of revenues garnered, I predict that this sort of "store-and-forward" videophoning will be the catalyst that will kickstart broadband into overdrive. Kids, grandparents and broadband enthusiasts will eat it up.

Then mainstream business guys and gals will figure out they that'll never have to get onto a plane again - and they'll like that. If mainstream AOL picks up on this - buy stock in camera, teleconferencing and ISP companies. And sell your airline, hotel and rental car stocks. Broadband - here we come.

[via Marc's Voice]

I spent many months looking into practical consumer applications for async video communications. It will be interesting to see what the AOL implementation feels like, but the technology is definately there and the approach (async versus real-time) is the right one. My own experiments enabled people to easily record a video from a webcam or DV camera, and then send or publish through IM --- we used JBuddy to provide presence awareness and messaging into all the IM networks -- email or post to a blog using MetaWeblog API. It all worked great and makes tons of sense for broadband suppliers and consumers.

ENT 1.0 and RSS Metadata

Mon, 14 Apr 2003 14:14:00 GMT

ENT can provide great new functionality - NOW RDF still looking for a killer (set of) app(s)?.

<snip>

Lots of pratical kinds of apps and services could benefit from ENT and since it's RSS2.0 - all the current aggregators can access it. It'll be one of those quick adds, and give tool vendors all sorts of new ways to provide great value to their customers.

Maybe these tool vendors can start to charge more :-)

[via Marc's Voice]

Marc has been tracking some great action around a new proposal for adding topic metadata to RSS feeds. I've read through the spec and like the fact that it's a lightweight, simple to understand approach to topics, and it can scale as external/URI-based topic maps emerge. Would love to see popular RSS tools support this and see what can get done. This helps to open up the range of application types that RSS can support.

Hydra: Collaborative Text Editor

Mon, 14 Apr 2003 13:46:07 GMT

I picked this up from my comments on the Social Software post. Hydra is an OSX-based text editor that uses Rendezvous protocols to facilitate real-time collaborative coding. It's from a dev team (Coding Monkeys) out of Germany. Real-time apps continue to excite and impress, and it's great to see different approaches --- using Rendezvous, Flash Communication Server, Groove, or the new Microsoft P2P SDK.

Powell on Powerline

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 20:12:04 GMT

"This is within striking distance of being the third major broadband pipe into the home," Powell said. "I'm a little bummed it's not (available) in my area."

I think he means the forth major broadband pipe, as fixed and unlicensed wireless will be right in there too. But, it's great to see Powell pushing Powerline.

New Social Software Products

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 13:59:42 GMT

Social Software Making Progress The smaller the group, the more immediate value in the relationship. That's one notion behind an emerging phenomenon called ``social software"

[via Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Dan's got some thoughts on the emerging category of "social software", a phrase Clay Shirky has been promoting. Another interesting company solving similar problems --- and one who was just on a panel moderated by Clay, also including SocialText --- is Providence, RI-based Traction Software, who's "enterrprise weblog" software is really a powerful distributed communication and publishing tool for information professionals.

Analysts: Wi-Fi a 'Positive Disruption'

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 13:38:59 GMT

Analysts: Wi-Fi a 'Positive Disruption'

[via 802.11 Planet]

"Not since the earliest days of the Internet have we seen a technology capable of creating such positive disruption and change and we expect that 802.11 and its derivatives will only increase in importance over the next five years," said Jupiter Research Director Michael Gartenberg

Wi-Fi for Everyone

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 13:36:46 GMT

Wi-Fi for Everyone

[via 802.11 Planet]

Efforts to deliver broadband to low-income housing via WiFi. Sounds great.

C# and CLI Standards??

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 13:27:10 GMT

Microsoft to score new C# standard ISO will certify C# language and CLI - CNET News.com

[via Loosely Coupled news aggregator]

CNet reported on the ISO "seal of approval" on Microsoft's C# and CLI submissions. I looked into the ECMA and ISO "standards", and it's quite deceiving. Unlike many other consortsia-standards such as ANSI C or even ECMA-262 (ECMAScript), these are merely published references that CANNOT be used for commercial products or implementations. These last two paragraphs from the news.com piece tell it all:

On top of an ISO seal of approval, companies can also look at the published specifications of C# and the CLI to better understand the underlying products once they purchase them, Goodhew said.

The academic community benefits perhaps more from the published specifications to do computer science research than do companies, he added.

While it's great to have visibility into the architecture, this is hardly an open standard given the tight commercial restrictions imposed with it.

WiMAX vs/+ WiFi

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 13:09:28 GMT

From Broadband Intelligence:

WiMAX companies say the new standard, a metro area network (MAN) technology, is capable of providing up to 31 miles of linear service area range and eliminates the need to be in direct line of sight to the base station, a critical flaw undermining earlier efforts at fixed wireless broadband. The technology can also pool capacity to deliver rates up to 70 Mbps, enough bandwidth for 60 T-1 type connections or capacity to deliver DSL-level speeds to hundreds of homes using a single sector of a base station, which are expected to come equipped with six sectors.

Hoping to emulate the success of the Wi-Fi Alliance, which spurred the current Wi-Fi revolution, WiMAX will develop conformance test plans, select certification labs and host interoperability events for equipment vendors, as well as work with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute to develop test plans for HIPERMAN, the European broadband wireless metro area access standard. Vendors who pass the interoperability tests will get a “WiMAX Certified” seal of approval.

It's clear that very high-speed fixed wireless can be complementary to WiFi for broadband wireless, and it's good to see industry collaboration around standards that will make it effective (e.g. eliminating line of sight problems that have stalled fixed wireless in the past), but given the incredible investment surrounding WiFi access points and cards, and the R&D around extending 802.11's effective range, it seems that this will ultimately be a competitive situation.

Commentary on Open Source vs/and Open Standards

Tue, 08 Apr 2003 21:17:11 GMT

Openness in software. Kevin Werbach offers some good commentary on how open standards influences open source, and its relation to proprietary software.

Behlendorf on Open Source and Outsourcing

Tue, 08 Apr 2003 20:57:17 GMT

Open source and global development

The world's full of smart people who have, collectively, a lot of the intellectual bandwidth needed to absorb and master open-source infrastructure. It's the scarcity of expertise with the software that has made open source uneconomical in a lot of cases. As people in India and Russia and elsewhere dig into open source technologies, they can broker that expertise and help bridge the gap between the theory and the practice of reuse. [Full story at InfoWorld.com].

[via Jon's Radio]

One theme I've been investigating lately is the degree to which a formal software manufacturing economy is emerging, and looking at how open source and global development and outsourcing are fueling this trend. This is a timely and thoughtful pice and interview on this very topic.