Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 launched on Tuesday morning, providing computer giant Microsoft with a much-needed revamp for two product lines accounting for a majority of the company's revenue. Windows Vista is Microsoft's first consumer operating system release since Windows XP in October 2001, and the 5 year gap was definitely noticeable to customers increasingly moving everyday tasks away from the desktop operating system and into hosted applications such as Yahoo! Mail or Google Calendar.
Both Vista and Office boast major improvements over their predecessors, taking advantage of the computing and graphics power found in today's machines and creating a better connected experience over the local network as well as the worldwide web. Vista features major overhauls to networking, sound, and graphics devices and drivers, some of the essential components of any desktop platform. Windows Presentation Foundation delivers a whole new interaction layer for content and interactivity, making applications written for past Windows OSs appear even more dated.
Office 2007 received a major overhaul, replacing the familiar drop-down menu bar with graphical representations of the same tasks in what Microsoft is calling its "Ribbon UI." The new office productivity software will make your colleagues feel like dinosaurs based on new document outlining tools and fancy graphs alone.
All these changes come at a price of course, and software buyers will need to decide which of the 12 or more versions of Vista or Office best suites their need. Vista users can choose between Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, or Business editions of the software available in full, upgrade, or OEM varieties ranging from $100 to $400.
Are all of these new features exciting reasons to upgrade? Will consumers and businesses upgrade their operating systems or wait until buying a computer pre-loaded with the new OS? Will desktop gadgets and Internet Explorer 7 change the bridge between the desktop and our online lives? Has Om given up his MacBook Pro for a younger and sexier Windows laptop?
We answer these questions and more in this week's PodSession, Windows Vista launch. The podcast is 26 minutes in length, a 12 MB download.
The connected home is coming. Every year we hear about new technology on the verge of changing how we toast bread, watch television, or listen to music by the pool. The connected home promises to synchronize our digital lifestyle, connecting the broadband connected digital hubs of our home life into any piece of home electronics with a computer chip and networking gear.
This month's Consumer Electronics Show and Macworld conferences introduced the world (yet again) to new hardware and software that will redefine our digital home. Or will it? What do we want from our home media center? Should our toaster, coffee maker, and alarm clock be network aware, coordinating our morning routines? What are the current services and devices with the most promise, taking advantage of assets on the local network as well as in the cloud?
In this week's PodSession Om and I cut through the marketing hype and extended promises of the connected home, presenting our current realities and the most promising future services. This week's PodSession, Connected Home, is 20 minutes in length, a 10 MB download.
The calendar year has almost come to a close as the world focuses on tangible goods for the holidays and Internet time slows down just a little bit. In this week's PodSession Om and I review a few trends from 2006 and their impact on next year's big trends.
Years ago marketers moved their standard unit of web traffic measurement from "hits" to "pageviews" to better reflect the images, movies, and other sub-components of a page brought together in a single browser window to enhance user experience. In 2006 subsections of web pages became even more apparent, throwing off historical measurements of website popularity and customer engagement. From Ajax components to sidebar widgets and embedded movies, sub-components of a page came alive, creating what was often a better user experience while complicating the statistical measurement the web and its advertisers rely upon.
The lifeblood of the web, the advertising systems lining the pockets of online companies large and small, received significant upgrades this year. Microsoft launched a new online advertising product, AdCenter, and Yahoo! Search Marketing received an upgrade with the introduction of Project Panama. Google's AdSense product didn't sit still either, adding better understanding of advertising landing pages and tracking a sale from ad display through completed purchase with Google Checkout.
The technologies powering the web received a major upgrade as well. It was only a year ago when Om and I interviewed David Heinemeier Hansson just before the release of Ruby on Rails version 1.0. Rails continues to be a hot topic and serves as an inspiration for frameworks in other programming languages.
Om and I discuss these topics and much much more in this week's PodSession, Year-long trends in review. The podcast is 21 minutes in length, a 10 MB download.
Yahoo! announced a company reorganization earlier this week, announcing what CEO Terry Semel calls the company's "third phase -- one focused on customers." The new focus seems like a maturation from Yahoo's previous focus on organization through directories, search, and now people.
Yahoo! is the biggest Internet brand in the United States and Japan as well as a significant player throughout the world. The Yahoo.com homepage, mail, and instant messenger are at the center of many people's lives, connecting them to the people and information they care most about. In the U.S. the Yahoo! brand might even be attached to your dial-up or broadband service through companies such as AT&T. Check your fantasy sports team, find a date, send e-mail, create your own cartoon impersonation, program your TiVo, download music, research your stocks, find a new job, all within the same web property.
Om and I evaluate the current and future prospects for Yahoo in our latest PodSesssion, Yahoo! for the masses. The podcast is 22 minutes in length, a 10 MB download.
Widgets, gadgets, and modules are small pieces of content which provide up-to-date information about the topics you care about. Om and I are organizing the first ever widgets conference next week but I realized we've never really discussed widgets and their importance on our podcast.
Widgets are small pieces of content, usually marked up in either HTML or Flash, wrapped in a special widget platform descriptor or stand-alone embed, and added to a widget-enabled endpoint. Widget content can be distributed to Apple and Windows desktops, a mobile phone, MySpace, Windows Live, Google, and many other popular information destinations. Widget technology lets users customize their information experience anywhere and at anytime.
In this week's podcast Om and I talk about widget technology and why businesses should connect with the widget ecosystem. We discuss a few different types of widget endpoints, design implications of tiny content, and where we think widgets are headed in the near future.
Christmas is coming, and that means a new wave of digital music players will be waiting for eager ears. The portable music market will have a new entrant next month with Microsoft's launch of Zune, yet another attempt to shave some market share off the dominant iPod family. What do consumers want in a digital music player? Manufacturers have tried answering that question with a pile of features including radio tuners, line-in, replaceable batteries, wireless connectivity, and displays designed for one-line of text all the way up to a widescreen video.
Microsoft promotes social sharing in its upcoming player, and they're not alone. Over the past year we've seen significant uptake in music playlist sharing on sites such as Last.fm, MyStrands, iLike, and others. Software is taking an automated approach to music discovery, connecting your own habits with the recommendations and musical tastes of your friends.
What has changed in the music industry? Will Microsoft's new music player shift the market or will it be another yawn from the deep-pocketed software giant? Does the mobile phone stand a chance as a portable music player? What do we want out of a hardware device and recommendation systems?
Om and I discuss these issues and more in this week's PodSession, Music Players and Profilers. The podcast is 23 minutes in length, a 10.5 MB download.
Google's purchase of YouTube last week for $1.65 billion in stock dominated last week's tech news. That's a lot of money for the leading video hosting site with many copyright violations. In this PodSession Om and I pick our favorite companies we think big Internet players could purchase for less than the New York Yankees' $200 million payroll.
Over the last week Om had a chance to step back from the cutting edge and talk to his computer savvy friends about their favorite online applications and services. Once we step out of our Silicon Valley bubble, what is the real adoption rate of the new and useful technologies we use every day?
Technologies such as Zillow and Skype do not seem to be gaining traction with even somewhat technical mainstream users. Existing relationships are getting an upgrade, such as AOL for internet access and Verizon for cheap and unlimited calls. The key hurdle seems to be actually trying out and being exposed to these new technologies, usually through a knowledgeable friend, an advertisement, or a new experience at the mall. There's an interested audience out there, ready to use and leverage these new technologies, but they first need an introduction into the possibilities.
This week's PodSession, The 2.0 Reality Check, is 22 minutes in length, a 10 MB download.
Everyone has their own productivity hacks and tools, the ways we each attempt to augment our own lifestyles and habits with technology and planning to become more efficient in our daily lives. In this week's PodSession Om and I share a few tips and tricks as they apply to the lean world of startups.
First up is the gear bag, the set of hardware we lug around to make sure we are always connected. Our mobile phones are data-enabled, never far from our mail servers or even a quick chat.
I recommend ProCare for businesses with multiple computers as a way to skip lines and get better service from Apple for everything from logic board repairs to training new employees on productivity applications. Amazon Prime is a good way to share Internet shopping efficiency between up to 5 co-workers.
We also share typical daily schedules and daily efficiency hacks to help manage information overload.
Remember when you used to wonder if anyone really needed 500 channels? Well how about a million channels available on demand? Combine all the channels produced professionally around the world, add historical archives, and make it all available through your cable provider's set-top box. We're also seeing new content available for paid subscription that might never make business sense as a stand-alone channel. Professional video options are changing, providing more choices and global reach from the comfort of your couch.
Download services
Apple introduced a movie store last week, selling 125,000 downloadable feature films in less than 7 days. iTunes users can subscribe to The Daily Show for $10 a month or download a Disney movie for about the same price. Amazon Unbox sells downloadable movies and TV shows for about the same price as DVDs, with a lower-priced rental option available.
Online streaming
Famous English soccer club Manchester United has its own television channel covering all its games. Fans can subscribe to MUTV and watch highlights and historical matches online. Spanish club Real Madrid offers live streaming of all matches over the web for 5 Euro a month. Fans all over the world can tune into matches and highlights from their favorite clubs, enabling new content not available via local operators.
Video on demand
As channel lineups become more crowded cable operators are looking to video-on-demand to tryout new content to a niche audience. Last year Comcast customers watched over 700 million hours of video on demand content.
A channel dedicated to Jewish culture might never be big enough for national distribution but over 50 new hours of professionally produced content is available on Shalom TV for $8 a month. World Wrestling Entertainment 24/7 is the most popular offering, helping wrestling fans get their historical and current fix for $8 a month.
Listen In
We cover these topics and more in this week's PodSession, Professional video distribution. The podcast is 19 minutes in length, a 9 MB download.
Every advance in web applications brings up new questions about the impending doom of the desktop computer. After over a decade of attempts to make the network the computer home and business PC sales are still strong, and new applications are taking advantage of local resources such as advanced CPU, GPU, memory, and hard drive space. Our computers are creating encrypted Skype connections, analyzing photos, organizing our music collection, and running more and more Flash and JavaScript at the request of online applications.
Om and I both agree the desktop is far from dead. New applications such as iTunes connect the desktop assets we already know with additional information and updates from the networked world of online music. Faster computers running the latest operating system and supporting software at home will only increase the speed and efficiency of web workers in the years to come.
New desktop technologies such as .Net Framework 3.0 and Apple's Core Image and animation libraries will give desktop application developers access to local resources such as the GPU and specialized instruction sets not available through web interfaces such as JavaScript. Desktop developers have less variables to worry about as they deploy their app and bind to local resources and OS abstractions such as local database storage, search, and privacy settings.
Desktop browser software is not sitting still. The upcoming releases of Internet Explorer 7 from Microsoft and Firefox 2 and 3 from Mozilla will enable new features for web developers and their users. These new browsers will have better support for offline viewing and will be more easily extensible for add-ons from your favorite web applications. JavaScript in the browser will get an upgrade, with increased programmability and features to help power the next generation of web apps.
The participatory web has created a two-way relationship between websites and their users. Social sites are reliant upon the contributions of individual nodes to add value to the total power of the network. The site must continue to introduce new features to keep users engaged and to stay ahead of the competition.
The Web is a place of constant change. Companies can either engage with their online communities or watch their brand and user base fall apart as users move to the next best solution. Many of the mini-revolts rapidly emerging in online concentrated communities can be prevented with better communication and adaptability of businesses.
This week's PodSession, User Generated Revolt, is 21 minutes in length, a 20 MB download.
I spent last weekend at Foo Camp, a gathering of about 200 technologists about 60 miles north of San Francisco on the grounds of O'Reilly Media. Om attended on Saturday afternoon and both of us came away with various impressions of people and ideas shaping our current technology world as well as a few trends just around the corner.
I was surrounded by so many interesting people and ideas my head is still spinning. Om enjoyed the frankness of discussions and the ability for people to take big bets with their ideas and plan out a better world.
This week's PodSession, A Camp Named Foo, is 20 minutes in length, a 9 MB download.
We saw a bit of a shakeup in the web startup space last week as Kiko, FeedLounge, PubSub, and other often mentioned startups either teetered on the edge of existence or fell off the map completely. In an age of rapid technology expansion fueling new Internet startups, what are some of the essential qualities that will help a new company hang on? Should companies cower in fear of the day Internet giants Google, Yahoo!, or Microsoft might cast a shadow on a small startup and trounce them with distribution? Should we all just quit now?
Om and I discuss these questions and more in this week's PodSession, Snakes on a Business Plan. The podcast is 25 minutes in length, a 11 MB download.
In a recent issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine Bob Briscoe, Andrew Odlyzko, and Benjamin Tilly, three respected academics argued that the Metcalfe's Law - which states that the value of the network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system - is wrong and dangerous.
The last week contained big announcements from Apple and Google at WWDC and SES conferences respectively. Apple announced new desktop and server hardware as well as a few new features from its next operating system, code-named Leopard. Google and Fox Interactive linked up in a three-year search and advertising deal worth over $900 million and added video search to the Google homepage, dropping Froogle from the list.
Om says he will never buy another piece of Apple hardware. The form-factor previously known as a laptop is burning laps during an already hot summer and causing us to place our notebook computers on a table at home, work, or cafe. Be sure to watch out for battery recalls to avoid a battery acid explosion in your lap! How long will it be before the first laptop-burn lawsuits pop up, damaging the skin of the elderly and indie-hipsters alike?
Google beat out Yahoo!, Microsoft, and others for the rights to power search and text-based advertising on Fox Interactive Media properties including MySpace and IGN. Google guaranteed payments of $900 million over three years if Fox Interactive meets site traffic and performance goals. MySpace and IGN continue to grow in the U.S. and expanding into international markets giving Google access to a younger audience and better ad targeting if they can monetize the traffic.
Online advertising spending will reach $16.7 billion in 2006 according to research firm eMarketer. Google and Yahoo! are the two biggest players, with 23% and 19% of the market respectively, with a variety of other services collecting the other $10 billion this year. Advertising networks are popping up every week, looking for their own slice of the available millions through group targeting, niche marketing, and interactive formats.
Any advertising network needs to have enough inventory and targeting to cover their client sites. Large FM Publishing sites such as Digg and GigaOm might run through ad inventory from one network quickly, requiring the sites to serve ads from multiple networks. Advertising sales teams are a limiting factor in the growth of ad networks, and there are only so many talented individuals to go around. Is there a shortage of advertising talent in our new Web economy?
Om now relies on advertising full-time to run his new startup. We run through a few different advertising scenarios in this podcast, including ad-free memberships, in an attempt to better define the current marketplace and the options available to webmasters.
Last week I attended the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, learning lots of new information about the software powering our favorite online services. I had a chance to hear about the latest changes in open source software directly from the teams and benevolent dictators leading the way as well learn about the variety of communities and business models in the world of open source.
Om and I talk about the current state of many different open source languages and programs in this week's PodSession. Will Perl 6 and Python 3000 ever be released? What are some big changes happening in the underlying software of the web that developers and businesses should pay attention to? What are the latest developments in open source text and voice messaging? What are some of the big emerging trends we will see play out over the next 1-3 years?
Om and I discuss these issues and more in this week's PodSession, Open Source Convention. The podcast is 22 minutes in length, a 10 MB download.
Companies such as Google, Earthlink, and MetroFi continue to roll-out municipal WiFi networks in Philadelphia, Mountain View, and other locations, creating new possibilities for an always-connected individual and/or device. Fon hopes to bridge the gaps and provide a different type of public WiFi system through its own network of user-contributed hotspots. You could always try the local cafe for a monthly paid plan.
How is pervasive wireless high speed data changing the WiFi landscape? As EVDO Rev. A and HSDPA becomes available in more and more cities in the United States and around the world, will broadly deployed WiFi hotspots provide competitive coverage and speed to compete?
In this week's PodSession, 3G vs. WiFi, Om and I take a look at the current state of 3G wireless data technologies and WiFi rollouts in the United States. The podcast is 20 minutes in length, a 9 MB download.
Widgets are everywhere! As web companies open up their homepages and sidebars to user content and customization widgets are the implementation of choice, allowing a variety of content providers to easily plug-in.
Small companies are discovering the broad distribution options of widget content across the Web from personal home pages from Microsoft and Google to blog sidebars powered by WordPress or TypePad. MySpace is an entire widget economy unto itself, sustaining small companies providing scrolling photo albums or video clips.
Om and I discuss the current state of the world of widgets in this week's PodSession, Widgetization of the Web. The podcast is 23 minutes in length, a 10 MB download.
How do you define success? In years past we looked towards acquisitions or a possible public stock offering as a sign a company had "made it" and achieved success in the marketplace. In today's business environment of bootstrapped startups and distributed employees and company base the definition of startup success is also changing. Small teams can launch a new company and product providing more than enough revenue to cover their expenses and then some. Big moves such as mergers, acquisitions, and public offerings might actually hurt these small businesses and their small markets.
Some startups begin as hobbies and turn into full-blown companies with enough market interest. Some startups have a master plan for industry domination, even if the industry is still being defined. Our evaluation of success is rapidly changing, and is the topic of this week's podcast.
This week's PodSession, Defining Success, is 19 minutes in length, a 9 MB download.
Instant messaging is constantly changing, with big players such as AOL, eBay, Microsoft, and Yahoo trying to one-up each other on the most features for instant communication online and offline. In the past week we have seen new releases of Windows Live Messenger from Microsoft and a beta release of Yahoo! Messenger, complete with integrated voice and video calling as well as plugins to add even more content to an IM window. What do end users want from their messaging client?
Seth Sternberg of browser-based instant messaging company Meebo joined today's podcast to share his expertise in the messaging space. Seth shared with us requests from his users and provided a look inside the minds of corporations providing IM services.
Do current messaging clients suffer from feature bloat? Is messaging software from major portals a loss leader or a profit center? How is instant messaging different overseas? What are some current IM usage patterns?
We talk about these topics and more in this week's PodSession, Instant Messaging. The podcast is 24 minutes in length, a 11 MB download.
The FIFA World Cup may be the biggest online video event in Internet history. Fans have a few choices when watching games or highlights online, whether streaming from their home media gateways or watching the game directly through a content provider such as ESPN360.
Video publishing sites are taking off, with hundreds of startups competing for the attention of content producers with cameras integrated into everyday items such as laptops, desktops, and mobile phones.
The content and tools are readily available, but is anyone coming? What is the revenue model of video startups in a disk and bandwidth heavy business? How far away are we from an online shakeout?
Om and I talk about these issues and more in this week's PodSession, Online video revolution. The podcast is 22 minutes in length, a 10 MB download.
Who's blogging and who's listening? In this week's PodSession Om and I discuss four new products to help everyday people and even some Aussies publish and discover new content online. We applied an Siskel & Ebert style of review to these four new web products.
Blog and feed search
Gnoos indexes the Austrailian blogosphere. The new search site is focused on creating a good blog discovery process for Austrailian bloggers and their content but also includes news from bloggers and media sources around the world. Om liked the idea of search engines with local flavor but I thought Gnoos violates fair use laws and would be better off taking a slice from someone else's index instead of building their own.
Ask launched blog search on its main search pages as well as within Bloglines, its aggregator property. The new search engine is fast and easy for new users to get used to. Ask incorporated RSS search results into every page, and includes links to services from competing companies such as Yahoo's del.icio.us and Google personalized homepage and Google Reader. Om and I gave Ask Blog Search two thumbs up.
Blog publishing
Six Apart unvelied new blogging product Vox last week to about 500 users. The new personal blogging software is aimed at the mass market of potential bloggers with audio, video, books, and ideas to share with others. The product was formerly referred to as Comet since its first mention last fall. Om and I were undecided about the product's ease of use to new bloggers and wonder about Six Apart's ability to properly distinguish its four blogging products to itself and its white label partners.
eBay will add new blogging and wiki features to its site next week according to AuctionBytes and further reporting by Steve Rubel. Wikis could help eBay engage its community to create guides and how-tos for other members and create more engaged buyers and sellers. Blogs can help power sellers further establish a reputation online and drive repeat business.
Last night Om and I sat down with Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of open-source blogging software WordPress and a recent founder of Automattic. Automattic is a software services company centered around the WordPress blogging platform. This podcast is a little geeky and aimed at entrepreneurs just getting started
What does it take to launch a successful startup? In this week's PodSession we discuss identifying your customers, how to build to scale, how to decide on a programming language (Rails vs. PHP vs. ?), how to design for your users, and what concepts (such as spam) you cannot afford to overlook. Matt jumps in with some stories from the front line of software development with close to 200,000 active users on hosted blog site WordPress.com and about 40 million blog spam messages blocked on Akismet.
During the podcast we mention Cal Henderson's new book, Building Scalable Web Sites, about designing hardware and software systems for web applications with Cal's work on Flickr as a solid example.
In this week's podcast Om and I talk about the penetration of modern web ideas across borders and board rooms. How do so-called "Web 2.0" technologies apply to a world outside buzz-heavy Silicon Valley and consumer-focused startups? What are the business opportunities available for companies who understand both worlds and mesh together the best of both sides?
Om spoke at last week's Mesh conference in Toronto, Canada. The conference drew a lot of fresh faces and new ideas from Canada and nearby areas. Enterprise Ireland hosted a similar event a few weeks ago named Web2Ireland. Countries and companies are realizing the ideas of the modern web have applications on their own home turf and within their speciality sectors to help change productivity, work flow, and community interaction.
The next generation of video game consoles and games will be interconnected and ever-changing. Consumers will purchase a gaming console, bring it home, and connect it to their home network to access updates, new content, new opponents, and new shopping experiences. In this week's PodSession Om and I talk about the current state of the video game industry as well as the new demand created for servers, networking gear, software, and home connectivity as new devices make their way into the home.
Portable and mobile phone gaming are also picking up speed, with public WiFi hotspot and 3G cellular technologies enabling gameplay in new locations. Nintendo's GameBoy DS includes WiFi and free access to the Internet and online gaming from McDonalds, Barnes and Noble, and other locations. Microsoft just announced Live Anywhere, a new online gaming initiative including Windows Mobile, Java, and BREW mobile handsets.
We talk about these topics and more in this week's PodSession, Video games gunning for bandwidth. The podcast is 21 minutes in length, a 10 MB download
Om and I attended Startup School last Saturday, a one-day event at Stanford organized by seed funders Y Combinator. Entrepreneurs shared lessons learned in between sessions from supportive services such as lawyers, venture capitalists, and a journalist.
Did we learn anything? Lawyers are excited about the many new patent opportunities for startups, a supposedly necessary tool to bargain against the patents of others. Moonlighting as an entrepreneur is in, creating new prototypes with a low burn-rate. Y Combinator provides seed money to young entrepreneurs, enough for about 3 months of development.
Om and I discuss our favorite and least favorite speeches from Startup School and some of the entrepreneurs we met along the way. What does it take to be a successful startup in 2006? Are you building your company around a product or a feature? What does it take to get the attention of a journalist?
This week's PodSession, Startup School, is 24 minutes in length, a 11 MB download.
EBay, threatened by Google's expansion into its key markets, is looking for new allies in Microsoft and/or Yahoo. Google Base, Google Wallet, and Google Talk directly compete with eBay's three main businesses: product listings, PayPal payments, and Skype.
EBay is voicing its concern with its checkbook and looking for new preferred advertising partners and cross-promotional opportunities. Should eBay be afraid of Google? How many management consultants did it take for eBay to wake up and realize its business direction? Is anyone safe from the growing power of Google over search and commerce?
Om and I discuss these issues and more in this week's PodSession, eBay shopping for partners. The podcast is 20 minutes in length, a 9 MB download.
Video content is moving online in a big way. ABC recently announced streams of its popular shows will be available online for free. Fox will offer its programming online as well, including web-only episodes of popular shows such as Family Guy. Smaller players such as Rocketboom deliver content created especially for online viewing and syndicated through partnerships with companies such as TiVo. Filling in the middle is the iTunes video store and its single purchase and subscription offerings.
Are large content producers merely experimenting with online distribution or is this a trend that is here to stay? What's driving viewer numbers from all over the production spectrum from two guys on their couch to two news anchors behind a desk? Can online video distribution be profitable for large publishers?
Om and I talk about these questions and more in this week's podsession, Video Killed the TV Star. The podcast is 20 minutes long, a 9 MB download.
Apple introduced Boot Camp last Wednesday to much fanfare. The new application, currently in public beta, allows owners of Apple hardware based on Intel chipsets to choose between Apple's OS X or another operating system such as Microsoft Windows when booting their computer. The new software is a preview into features of Apple's next major operating release, code-named "Leopard," to be unveiled at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco this August.
The ideas behind Boot Camp are nothing new, and applications such as Virtual PC have provided a virtualization of Windows on a Mac for years. What has changed in the world of Apple with the introduction of Boot Camp? Will more users make the switch now that they can take a native install of Windows with them?
Om thinks Boot Camp will help large companies such as banks continue to use their legacy applications while making the switch to Windows. I envision users booting to Windows for the applications that are only available on that platform or for advanced features now available in OS X versions. An accountant may boot to Windows for access to the latest copy of QuickBooks or a gamer might boot to Windows to play his or her favorite video game.
This week's second PodSession is titled Windows on a Mac. The podcast is 10 minutes long, a 5 MB download.
Network operators are able to pinpoint your location better than ever before. Whether it's municipal WiFi or your local cable operator, advertisers are paying top dollar to know where you are and what you like to do online at each location.
On April 5 the city of San Francisco announced Earthlink and Google will create a WiFi network throughout the city supported by location-targeted advertising. If you browse the web from a park bench you may receive an advertisement for a cup of coffee down the street or a furniture shop. This information could be based on your browsing habits and the locations where you frequently access the Internet. It seems like the free Internet offered by Netzero and others in the late 90s upgraded for the broadband age. Are you willing to give up information about your every click and your wireless location in exchange for free Internet access?
Mobile phone carriers have upgraded their networks and their phones to provide more accurate location data for emergency personnel under the E911 initiative. Wireless carriers are required to provide location information within 50 to 300 meters in most cases to public safety personnel. Nextel phones have utilized GPS functionality for years to track corporate workers in the field. New location-based services are just starting to pop up as carriers hone in on your exact location at any point in time. Is all this mobile tracking too close for comfort? Are there any applications we would like to provide with our location data in an on-demand or always-on format?
Broadband everywhere! New data technologies from major carriers will deliver over 1 Mb/s to mobile phone handsets and laptop computers in major metropolitan areas across the United States by the end of 2006. The ability to tap into a fast, low-latency network is changing the way people do business and causing a few developers to rethink their applications for an always-on broadband connected user with constant access to his or her personal device.
EV-DO is a high-speed data technology currently deployed by CDMA carriers in major markets. The latest version of EV-DO, revision A, promises up download speeds up to 3.1 Mb/s, upload speeds as fast as 1.8 Mb/s, and latency as low as 50ms. This low latency makes VoIP and video chat a reality over cellular-based networks. EV-DO is available through Sprint branded as Mobile Broadband for laptops or PowerVision for phone handsets. EV-DO is also available through Verizon Wireless branded as BroadbandAccess for laptops or V Cast for phone handsets.
HSDPA is a competing standard for GSM networks. It is capable of download speeds up to 3.6 Mb/s and uploads of 384 Kb/s. HSDPA allows simultaneous voice and data and can downgrade to older UMTS when a newer network is not available. Cingular brands their HSDPA offering as BroadbandConnect.
What would you do with a 1 Mb/s always-on connection in your pocket, on your laptop, or any other device? Om and I talk discuss current offerings from major U.S. carriers as well as some of the applications that are already taking advantage of these new ubiquitous broadband connections.
This week's podcast, Wireless broadband, is 22 minutes long, a 10 MB download.
On the home networking front, new devices are plugging-in to your local network for quick access by multiple computers and a rich browsing experience inside of a browser.
We are starting to see some enterprise-level backup and storage technologies applied to the consumer space. Home computer users are consuming more and more storage space by ripping CD collections, downloading music and movies, and loading large images from their cameras. Lost data means either a lot more work or memories vanished forever, creating new opportunities for a data insurance policy for individuals.
Om and I talk about these topics and more in this week's PodSession titled Online storage. The podcast is 21 minutes in length, a 9.6 MB download.
In this week's PodSession Om and I talk about Google Finance and the emergence of Google's portal play. With e-mail, calendaring, mailing lists, finance, instant messaging, news, feed aggregator and more, Google is expanding its product offering beyond its search core and creating new "sticky" environments for its users.
Google Finance was created in Bangalore, India for the U.S. financial market. I liked the product's data overlays and integration of information from multiple Google properties such as blog search, groups, and news. Om found the product lacking in features such as major shareholders and insider activities.
What do users want from a portal? Are Gmail users more likely to spend time on other Google properties? Is Google a portal? Aren't portals dead?
We talk about these issues and more in this week's PodSession, Pushing the Portal. The podcast is 19 minutes long, a 9 MB download.
In this week's PodSession Om and I discuss voice and mobile technologies currently available for platform integration. When does it make sense for a web application to add voice or mobile capabilities? What are the costs and benefits?
Are so called "web 2.0" companies just shinier versions of existing applications? Is anyone actually pushing the envelope and inventing entirely new industries? IP-based voice applications have already changed the way we think about communicating online. Mobile phones are now common tools of daily communication with relatively fast data connections with always-on access to the Web and focused data. Why are we not seeing more integration of voice and mobile into new web applications?
Google Local and Windows Live Local search products are just starting to launch pay-per-call advertising on their sites, connecting any computer with a paying merchant over a telephone line. Other companies such as Progressive Auto Insurance are integrating support call centers with web applications to help complete sales.
Now that conference season is in full swing startup companies can walk through the halls of focused gatherings such as VON or CTIA to gather new ideas about product integration across multiple mediums and devices.
AT&T chief executive Ed Whitacre, affectionately referred to as "King Ed" by me, and "Mr. T" by others has always been of the school of thought that breaking up Ma Bell back in 1984 was a mistake. He has done his best to rectify that by gobbling up three out of seven Baby Bells - Ameritech, Pacific Bell, and more recently BellSouth - and merging them with his SBC. Of course along the way he picked up the remnants of a proud company called AT&T.
His splashiest move came last move when Mr. T bought BellSouth for $67 billion in cash, and about $22 billion in proportionate debt. Result, a giant phone company, the biggest in the world with over 71 million access lines, 54 million wireless customers, 9.5 million broadband lines and over $98 billion in sales.
I got together with Niall earlier this week and tried to do an analysis of the deal, its impact on Verizon and cable providers. Of course there are implications for start-ups, especially those in the telecom space. What it means for network neutrality, Yahoo! and Google. Hopefully you can tune in.
This week's PodSession, Return of Ma Bell is 21 minutes long, a 9 MB download.
New companies are launched every day in Silicon Valley on whims, enthusiasm, and occasionally firm financial footing. In this week's podsession we talk about startup business models beyond the flip and how to position a new company for sustainable growth and self-determination.
What are good candidates for billable web services?
How can startups partner with complimentary companies to create a stronger market presence?
Serving the enterprise market.
On-demand impulse buys on mobile and home media devices.
Technologies such as JavaScript and Flash are changing the way we interact with content online. In this week's PodSession Om and I discuss the latest trends in the world of rich interactions.
Are these technologies interaction too complicated for the average person to grasp? When should you add such technologies to your web page or corporate intranet? Why are there not more implementations and examples online? Is there a talent shortage?
And you're listening to Om and Niall PodSessions. Hey Niall!
Niall
Hey, Om!
Om
How are you doing?
Niall
I'm doing well, it's good to be back.
Om
Yeah, it's been a while. We took a little longer this week.
Niall
We're doing eight days instead of seven days, but, yeah.
Om
Life is happening, so can't really complain too much about it.
Niall
Definitely.
Om
You know I have been down to the peninsula so many times this last one week, not only am I tired, it's cut into my blogging time and it's cut into my writing time. But I've been picking up on a new kind of sensation down in the peninsula these days. You were at the Mashup Camp, how do you feel?
Niall
I was at Mashup camp for two days and it felt very corporate. I expected something different from Mashup Camp, I expected Mashup Camp to have an introduction, people getting to know the APIs followed by developers actually coding against the APIs.
The guys that won prizes already had stuff that was out there for a couple of years or at least a year, so they'd been around, people had already used it. Some of them had gotten jobs because of what they had developed using those APIs. So it was just - maybe my expectations were wrong going in but I expected it to be a lot more hands-on developer coding.
Om
You know that's one of the things which I've observed is that you actually have a scarcity of good talent for the so-called Web 2.0 and it's out of sync with the amount of money which is going into these companies, because if you look around there are very few clever AJAX developers. It's a special kind of skill set which people don't realize is very hard to find.
Niall
Well, the interesting thing about the AJAX world, similar to CSS and web design, is you have to know how each browser interacts with your applications. So you have to know, from a similar standpoint of how CSS would render something on the page, you have to know how AJAX or JavaScript in general would change the interaction on that page. So it has added a new layer to how you approach the web app, so you would have HTML which you might have reviewed for search engine optimization -- how did you structure the page and what are the different weightings you are giving to different text on the page for example. CSS then styles the page and now you have the interaction model which is JavaScript and sometimes using AJAX to shuttle back and forth XML.
Om
All right, one of those things which makes you develop a new found respect for applications like Zimbra or Songbird, they do so much of their stuff in all these new technologies and the variables on that is just amazing. Hats off to the guys who do that! I mean, that's my take on this is that even though I still think the bigger issue of human resources or a lack of human resources is going to be a problem, because people like Yahoo! and Google are going to suck up all the talent that there is.
Niall
Could be possible, maybe they're trying to make up for that by putting out their special UI widgets and such, but some of the talent in the JavaScript space, the guys I'm thinking of, aren't with Yahoo! and they aren't with any of the big companies. They're indie guys, they're working on open source projects, open source frameworks that are out there, so they haven't really caught on yet. Maybe even though people are looking for these type of guys they're still doing their own thing, writing their own ticket, and doing it well.
Om
Who are those guys?
Niall
I was thinking of Alex Russell, who you met at dinner the other night. He's doing the Dojo toolkit over at Jot, so Jot's his full-time job. Part of that he contributes back to the open source community.
Brad Newburg, who is a consultant and was working for Rojo and the Internet Archive on some of their projects. When you flip a page in the virtual book on the Internet Archive, that's JavaScript that he helped develop.
While they're doing that they're able to tinker and really profile what's happening in individual browsers such as Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and all those different versions, and know how the apps are going to interact so you can get a good idea of the features to plan for and how your app is going to behave.
Om
But it still doesn't take away from the bigger issue, right? There is a lack of talent and all these companies are seriously getting funded. I mean not just little money, it's getting a little bit out of whack with the reality of building one of these little applications, and even rolling it out. I think that is what is the most amazing part.
Niall
Yeah, they're getting funding to build these new apps that might not get built within a big company. That's another angle: Is it possible for a big company like Yahoo! or Google to take the risks that these small companies are taking? For example, there's Google Video and there's Brightcove, two different Flash apps. I think Brightcove is doing some very cool stuff as a startup that Google is just starting to get into as a huge company. Yahoo! is doing some things in the JavaScript space, the creator of JSON (Douglas Crockford) works there for example, they have Rasmus who created PHP and so now they have some serialized PHP things today.
There's still a lot of talent being discovered at startups. Meebo, for example, has Elaine Wherry working the JavaScript magic there. People are learning this technology and I think we'll probably see a change in book sales. People will be learning how to do JavaScript.
With the new version of Mozilla Firefox, there is now a new version of JavaScript that has been introduced. Now there is a new learning curve as the other browsers, if they catch up to what's called E4X, if other people catch up to the E4X wave there are now new things you can do with JavaScript. Brendan Eich, he's who's working on that, he's at Mozilla, and he's Mr. JavaScript, so Firefox will have all of the nice JavaScript features before anyone else.
Om
Right, so, what is this new JavaScript? What does it do compared to the old ones? I have absolutely zero hacker chops, you should talk about that.
Niall
I haven't looked into it too deeply, so what I've seen just from some docs, there are different ways to handle what are called classes, wrappers around things. Different ways to handle how data is stored, how you parse through something a lot quicker. Really I'm just pulling this out of the air, I really haven't dug into it too much but for people that I talked to who know a lot more about this than I do say it's a big deal.
Om
Since you talked to those people and I talked to you, must be a big deal.
Niall
OK.
Om
The other issue is the issue of why are we bothering with AJAX now that there is the option of Flash, which is more developer tools and more easier for developing interactive browser-based applications. We looked at Goowy, for example, it's a pretty nifty little application and folks at Laszlo are doing some interesting stuff. So why do we have to go learn all these complicated things which generically known as AJAX or Web 2.0?
Niall
So even in the Flash world there's a lot of versioning going on.I spoke to the lead Flash evangelist from Macromedia, Adobe I have to start saying, on Monday and we were talking about the adoption of Flash, so a lot of the Flash tools you'll see out there have a minimum version of 6 and we're now up to 8.5 and there are new things you can do with each version along the way. The newest version has a better, higher quality video codec. If everyone upgraded to the latest version of Flash, you'd be able to have a lot better video similar to how you have better video in the latest version of Quicktime than you would before with the H.264 does that. In this case, the OnVideo 6 versus the OnVideo 7 codec. There's still the versioning issue in Flash that people have to get caught up to be able to do all the latest, coolest things. AJAX is open, people are able to play with it really easily, the IDEs (the development interfaces) are out there for people to play with. Flash now just created open compilers so now you can custom compile what you'd use to construct your app. So after you write the code you can run it through that constructor and write the app. The applications or development environments for Flash still cost money: there's not an Eclipse equivalent.
Just last month for AJAX, JavaScript, it was announced that a bunch of companies including Google, IBM, Dojo Toolkit, and a few others, were getting together for the Open Ajax Initiative to include JavaScript and AJAX development inside of the Eclipse, which is a very popular development tool. I think that will give an edge to JavaScript for the near future.
Om
How does it impact people like me, for example? I have a popular blog, so good, boo hoo. What does it really do for me? How does it impact. How do I optimize my user experience using all these technologies.
Niall
Well, Flash you can look at if you're just playing video on the page, there's a certain adoption rate that's pretty high for Flash video, that's why Google Video uses it, for example. It's about 90% or so, whereas Quicktime is at about 70%. It's a pretty good experience to show that and be able to stream the video and have a good multimedia experience there. You can also have multimedia on the input side. If you have a webcam hooked up and you can get input from that webcam or get input from a microphone, that's what Odeo is doing to create these podcasting apps. You can, in the AJAX world, look at what on the screen to do you want to create a richer experience around. It could be the comment field and giving a rich WYSIWYG editor, what you see is what you get, so you can click on something similar to having.
Om
I get that, I get that. Now I get that, how will I do it? I'm not a programmer so I basically have to pay somebody to get this thing done?
Niall
I think it's the same as other tools you've seen. You'll have to pay someone to do it or it'll be bundled into tools you already use. If you go out and buy Zimbra, you go out and buy Joyent, you're already using the technology that's there. Same thing with Outlook Web Access: these are AJAX tools that you're buying and getting into. If you want to customize any of those tools, you're going to have to pay someone to customize Outlook Web Access for you, for example.
Om
Now I've figured out how O'Reilly actually makes money. All right, moving right along, but you know I still I'm just trying to grasp this whole thing and just trying to see how do I make the experience for my readers better. What are the cool things I can do easily? Not have to pay somebody like hundreds of thousands of dollars, that's all. It's like a fear of big companies, but this is a technology which has bubbled from below and it is a technology which is not taking into account people with some Web 2.0 requirements, which is the blog universe.
Niall
So I don't see it as a barrier to entry. It is in the same way as if you wanted to go in and modify WordPress, or you wanted to add a plugin to WordPress, you'd have the same problem where you'd have to go find someone who knows PHP or knows the WordPress system, so any time you want to tweak a system you're going to have the same issues. With AJAX, JavaScript, or Flash, you're going to look for what's the experience you want to deliver and look for someone to help you deliver that experience. There are still going to be libraries available, you might be able to find a plugin for WordPress, you might find a JavaScript plugin that allows you to do this.
script.aculo.us is pretty popular as one of the scripts that's used in some of the WordPress themes out there. The Prototype Framework is another, there are a bunch of different libraries and frameworks available. MooFX is a JavaScript library that's pretty lightweight. There are all these different libraries that are out there that have, I mentioned Dojo, I have to mention it again because that's Alex's project. There are all these different libraries that are out there that you can tie into and they'll give you instructions on how to change something in your template code and just do this and it will help you get what you want. They have examples about how to do it, it's the same learning that we've experienced with HTML over the years or any new technology that we're trying to grapple with. You can teach yourself a little bit, but really if you want the full deal you'll have to ask someone.
Om
Right. Man, I want to do a full AJAX makeover of GigaOm.
Niall
What would you do?
Om
I want some things, basic things for example, I want AJAX commenting. Why do I have to resubmit everything, because comments and now the volume of comments is increased so much that I want to optimize that experience. I want to be able to do little drop-downs on stock codes and company highlights and kind of do, figure out ways to do more interesting mashups, for example. I want, for example, to take a database of all the VOIP service providers and put them on a Google Map, I don't know. In order to do those things I really need to spend hours and hours and hours of just reading, not even doing those things. This is very difficult for creators in this Web 2.0 space.
We are the creators, right? The reason blogging took off is very simple: you go in, you write your stuff, and boom it's done. Right, so if these things are actually going to have an impact, that's what I always look for. How do I make, I want to do simple things and draw, have a little slider on screen for user for my blog users to just log into the system to leave comments. Those kind of things.
Niall
It's possible they may be built into the core system, some of these features are built in to the Ruby system Typo for blogging, and that comes from the community really liking it, it's a very leading edge community that has Ruby on Rails installed with Typo that has their own custom web server there.
Om
I don't get it, I seriously don't get it, this desire to reinvent the wheel all the time.
Niall
Sure, but I think the things that you brought up are exactly what the AJAX and JavaScript is meant to be or is really excelling at, not refreshing the page. In comments, why would you want to see a new page saying hey, thanks for the comment, here is what you just submitted. Really what you want to is the effect happen right away, your comment has been added to the stream of comments here, and you want to see that placement right away, give that immediate feedback. Similarly, what I think was a revitalization of AJAX, Google Maps just dragging around, so now that's a given feature. Any mapping app that comes out it's "oh, can I drag it?" That's where we started to fall in love with AJAX all over again.
Om
Right, right, right. I mean, those are the things that are exciting to me as somebody who creates a pretty high volume of content and I want to be able to use these AJAX apps to bring out ten stories on Google WiFi I've written in the past five, six, seven, ten months, or whatever.
Niall
Right.
Om
Or bring out build a tag map which is easy to build, these things are very hard. Is it because we're at a very early stage or are they just difficult?
Niall
I don't think it's a level of difficulty, I think it's good that you have, and other people have, the excitement about the technologies to be willing to either pay someone to do it or learn by example, I learn by example, so your can learn by example and try to implement on your own. There are different tricks you can do to add this functionality to your blog. As I said before, I think it is a question of are you going to build it yourself? It's really nothing new, if you wanted to have something new on your blog, whether it's going to be AJAX or whether it's going to be a WordPress plugin, there is going to be a learning curve there a little bit. It's good to pick out the features, figure out what you would like to do. Some of that may be integrated back into the core system like we've seen with the new editing interface in WordPress which you're familiar with, that's something that's new and has added some of these technologies in and there are a lot of different JavaScript technologies that are in your latest version of WordPress, and there are some new technologies that are in the latest version of Movable Type as well
The blogging systems are looking at how do we reexamine our user interface and in that they're making some assumptions about what is the base browser, the base editing experience of our users. If, for example, everyone in the world used the latest version of Firefox it would be an easier development experience. You'd cut features and make it easy. There's still the need to develop for the multiple browser experience and how do you make sure that if your audience involves people using Internet Explorer 5 or Windows 98, how do you interact with them? As the alpha geeks who are always just on the bleeding edge and downloading the latest nightly build of any different browser, we tend to overlook that sometimes, but there's a good community of people out there that are running Movable Type on their Windows box and using Internet Explorer 5, for whatever reason.
Om
Well, since I'm not an alpha geek I'll probably qualify for those.
You know, big difference. Alpha geek, non geek. It's one of those things. I can't keep up with you. I would love to, somebody should do a more modest plain English language explainer for all these technologies. Set up a community website where idiots like me can go and learn a little bit more in a simpler manner. That's when the excitement kicks in. I am interested, I want to do this on my property, but it is so hard to learn. All these languages and everything else, so alpha geeks, no problem. I think that's what I mean, if you're going to do the web better, let the democratic web be there. Let the little guys be able to participate. In this, the little guys are the people who have less technical skills compared to you.
Niall
Sure, and that's what I try and do when I publish my Movable Type templates, for example. When a new technology comes out I try to put out a template so that the people who don't know how to use the technology just can copy and paste some text into their Movable Type install and create something new. You're welcome to rip off my stuff when I include, I'll be doing some new JavaScript things on my blog so you're welcome to rip those off.
Om
When are you going to move to WordPress?
Niall
Not in the near future.
Om
There we go.
Niall
It doesn't matter, that's the thing about JavaScript.
Om
We're the yin and the yang.
Niall
No, because this is all in the output, this is all in the web page's output, so it really doesn't matter if you're on WordPress or on Movable Type, the generated HTML that is rendered on that page is what matters for JavaScript.
Om
All right. One thing which basically, I wanted to go back to this, is really where does the thing have an impact? All these Web 2.0 technologies, are we beginning to see the impact of this in the enterprise phase. I have often wondered about that because those are fixed environments, right? You have fixed bandwidth, almost 100 MB/s, you have very high availability servers, all those things, so does Web 2.0 actually become the front-end for the back? Does the backend call software on demand or ...
Niall
I think the enterprise application technology is a little more exciting because, as I mentioned, there are all these different considerations you have to make while developing technologies for the general public. What browser are they using? What is the OS? At the enterprise level usually that's stamped out across the enterprise, so if you wanted everyone to use the latest version of Firefox, done, just push it over to the desktops overnight. That's something that's managed in the enterprise, you can make the requirement for your enterprise products. Not that it's a requirement but a lot of people use Outlook, it's just the de-facto standard. Given the Outlook and Exchange setup, if you bolt on something to Outlook like NewsGator, NewsGator has enterprise product, so if you're pushing out feeds, your NewsGator Enterprise Edition and that bolts on to Exchange as well. That's an enterprise product that takes advantage of feed technologies to push that into the existing structure of the enterprise software.
Om
I would have loved to see NewsGator people do a very AJAX browser-based experience, rather than making you download FeedDemon on one side and
Niall
They have NewsGator Online, they just don't talk about it too much. It's an OK experience.
Om
It's not an OK experience, I'm sorry. If you're one of..
Look, it's not FeedLounge and it's not a great experience. I think the real potential of NewsGator is when you really install FeedDemon. That is a great experience. That's one of those products which make me want to use a Windows machine, which is like - whoa. Still, it's an awesome experience and I think they should have gone in that direction, maybe we should email Greg on this.
Niall
Nick's on vacation this week, so I'm still waiting on Beta 3 to get excited about something more. They're doing a great job of it, I really like FeedDemon 2.0, that's an app that I'm enjoying rethinking the space. NewsGator is lucky to have him.
Om
Yeah, and NetNewsWire needs a little makeover, I think it's a little sluggish these days, let's just say that.
Niall
Yeah, it's been a few months, we'll see what Brent's up to. They are working on its integration with NewsGator Online services and we'll see what else he's been doing. It's been universal binary for a while, so that's been finished. Now that he's not worrying about support for the last few months he should be working on all this development code and we should see some cool things.
Om
So talking about universal binary, because we're about to end our podcast, are you in or you're out for the MacBook Pro?
Niall
I'm in, I definitely want to get a MacBook Pro. Apple kind of ruined things for me, maybe in a good way. Right now I'm holding off until next Tuesday to see what they have at the special event. They may just introduce the MacBook Ultimate or something that I really need to have. I don't like to make purchasing decisions while there's a special event coming up and it's only four business days away. I'm going to be good, hold back, see what comes, there may be some new fangled thing that just blows my mind and I'm justifying that by saying there will be more MacBook inventory there in the next four days anyways. They'll be waiting, stacking up, and waiting for me to place that order and come to my house the next day.
Om
I don't know, I'm just waiting for the phone call and they call me, I'm buying it. To hell with what's coming out on the 28th!
Niall
OK. Well, we'll be back on or around the 28th and let you know.
