Month: February 2008

The Answer May Be in the Cloud

The MicroSoft bid to purchase Yahoo! for approximately 45 BILLION dollars is one of those tech stories that has made the general news. There have been many attempts to analyze the decision (a Macworld take, MSNMoney). Obviously, the issue has something to with the connection between search and online ads. But, what could be worth so much money to a company whose operating system and office apps (Word, Excel) dominate the market? Here is an idea.

Ads are key, but what if the real issue lies down the road a few more years. What if Microsoft understands that the software on your desktop will soon become much less necessary. What if the future is in open source or even more likely in “the cloud”? Expensive software and perhaps even inexpensive local software have some disadvantages in comparison to apps that live on the net. As devices become more mobile and more powerful or perhaps simply as devices become more mobile, we may not want to carry our apps and the digital products we create with them with us. What we will want is to access our resources from more places in more ways. Google Docs or Zoho offer reasonable free alternatives to traditional office applications. Flickr and Picasa have changed the way we store and exchange our photographs. The point is there are free ways to do what we used to pay for and these alternatives offer more than the opportunity to save a little money. We are doing more of some things and also doing many things differently.

What will support the Microsoft empire when software becomes less lucrative. I guess ad money is the present answer, but it is also the connection of ads with experiences to which users are will to commit a huge amount of time. Microsoft cannot presently compete with Google in the search arena. Google ads are part of the search experience. Microsoft can’t compete with the web-based mail systems, photo sharing systems, blog services, etc. offered at no expense by other companies. Perhaps the future is coming faster than we realize and Microsoft needs a new revenue model. Perhaps Microsoft can skip the development stage and buy both an ad delivery system and some of the online resources Yahoo! can provide.

I can’t see basing the future of the consumer tech industry on ad revenue, but this may be the funding source in the short term. I keep thinking that we are going to have to be willing to pay for quality resources and content to encourage producers, but that has certainly not happened yet. The change has yet to occur even for television. In fact, we now pay the cable company to bring us more channels with more ads.

I wonder if ad revenue will play a bigger role in educational content delivered to schools. Do you remember the furor when ChannelOne wanted to offer content for free as long as kids in schools would also watch some ads? Now, we just complain about the cost of text books.

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Comment Spam

Comments are an important part of blogging. However, opening up your blog to everyone does attract “everyone”. A common remedy is to require registration so that as a host you have the opportunity to request additional information before comments are allowed. I trust individuals with .edu or .us email addresses, but others I make an attempt to identify.

Today I received a request from jamesrovance@gmail.com.

I did a Google Search (this is my first step before sending an email and asking for a little information). It turns out the address appears on a list of spammers with Chinese IP numbers. It turns out that the Google search probably saved me future work.

So, James – I will provide access when you get your name of the spammers list. Perhaps someone has acquired access to your gmail account. Get a new account. No offense.

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Harold Rheingold on Collaboration and Participation

TED Talks are a favorite content for travel listening. A presentation by Harold Rheingold on collaboration, commerce, and to a limited extent, the participatory web (titled altered to fit my preferred terminology) is now available. Rheingold has a history of offering some very interesting insights into technology (Tools For Thought, Smart Mobs).

The 20 minute presentation ties together the advance of societies and the tendency to collaborate. A core question is whether or not we can escape the tragedy of the commons. The answer, perhaps, if we communicate to collaborate (I like this phrase – I wonder if it is original).

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Must Be My Fault

A few days ago I wrote a short post commenting on Time Warner’s proposal to evaluate a plan calling for different rates for Internet use based on the amount of content moved. Today, a Washington Post article proposes that the issue is bandwidth limitation brought on by the increased interest in online video.

The article mentions illegal content, but I think it might be me doing legal things. I am sitting at my office desk catching up on the blogs I read AND watching CNN via my Slingbox. Evidently, according to CNN, the diet drinks I enjoy may be making me fat. That and finding out I am ruining the Internet at the same time.

Slingbox with CNC

I know UND does ‘traffic shaping” so we must still be under our allocation.

Way back when, the talk was of media convergence via the computer. For a long time, there was almost a disappointment that the predictions were not coming true. Now, perhaps, we are realizing that change is upon us.

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TiltViewer

Here is another Cindy suggestion. If you do Flickr projects, you might want to experiment with TiltViewer (from Airtight Interactive). The viewer allows you to browse and manipulate flickr images within a type of 3-D environment.

You can create a URL that allows others to view public images within this environment.

http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/tiltviewer/app/?user_id=86785198@N00 – the resources to be offered are made available by attaching flickr identification codes to the end of the TiltViewer URL.

TiltViewer

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Why visit this site?

Why visit this site (or any other specific site)? I read a post by Kevin Kelly that dealt with a related topic that I found quite interesting. Kelly begins with the topic of digital copies and asks the question why should we pay for anything we can get for free. I consider the copyright issue a great deal and the issues Kelly raised in identifying motivation for payment certainly apply.

The post did cause me to think about a somewhat different topic – with so much recycling of ideas/news/etc. among bloggers (as is the case with this reactive post), why visit the site of any given blogger?

Consider some items from Kelly’s list:

  • Immediacy – do you need the resource first
  • Personalization – is the resource suited to your needs
  • Authenticity – is it the real thing
  • Patronage – the desire to support a particular individual (the author)
  • Findability – free does not always imply easy access

It is pretty easy to repurpose this list to address various topics that involve “version choice”. With Kelly’s focus, an example might ask do you watch the original broadcast of a television program, watch it via TIVO, buy the end of season compilation at Best Buy, or look for a copy online? You can work your way through Kelly’s list to see how the issues apply to the decisions you make.

The same questions might be asked with regard to the bloggers we follow. We do make choices and some would argue we would be better off if we were more discriminating. Some bloggers offer the original ideas. Some we trust. Some we follow because others do. Some we follow out of loyalty.

There are probably some other issues that apply with blogs. One core idea in online social environments amounts to taking advantage of differences in the perspective/experience of others with whom you share a common interest. The “common interests” becomes the reason for commitment. That individual offers content/insights likely to be useful to you (because of core interests) but that you have not had the time to locate. Maybe this is just another variation of what Kelly calls “personalization”.

There is a downside to “common interests”. When does the input from an individual with common interests encourage deeper thinking or useful insight and when does it simply confirm biases? I think those who think of their blogs as a certain type of educational tool might offer a different approach. Can we locate the individuals who challenge us in addition to offering information to consider? Can we locate the individuals who have a way of explaining how they think and not just what they think? That may be the value added to the copy.

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Google – Forms For Spreadsheet

Integrating input from many individuals is a common online task. Think questionnaire. Input from an online form is sent to a server allowing the input to be stored in a format appropriate to a database or a spreadsheet.Writing the code to do form processing is a basic task those who work with PHP and MYSQL (or other server scripting languages) cut their teeth on, but what seem like such simple tasks still requires a good deal of work.

Google Documents now offers a convenient way to collect and store data from participants. Any spreadsheet can be updated using the new “form” option. After creating the structure of a spreadsheet (creating column headings), all you have to do is click the “Share” tab. You can then invite people (specify email addresses) to fill out a form. Those invited have access to a simple web page with textboxes corresponding to the cells in the spreadsheet. Fill in the blanks and submit. A new row of data is added to the spreadsheet.

This process if very easy to implement and there must be many educational applications. I like to create simple demonstrations when I encounter a new tool and the idea that first came to mind was to create a list of book recommendations. What follows is a link to the output from the demonstration I created.

View my example.

I could share the address for the input, but I decided that might not be a good idea. No telling what contributions anonymous spammers might offer. An open contribution process is not what Google has in mind. This is the reason for the email invitation to participants. There is an URL address for the form and this address can be passed around however you might feel to be productive and safe.

BTW – if you would like to contribute your own recommendations to my list of education/technology books just send me an email and I would be happy to send you the form URL. I do insist you provide enough information I would feel comfortable with you adding to this list.markgrabe at gmail

Google Forms

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