Archive for July, 2004
July 30th, 2004
How about software that can recognise a picture of a bar code taken with your cell phone, and provide you with product information? Or technology that can sort photos based on whether there’s a face in the picture, or whether the picture was taken outdoors?
These are some of the ideas Bill Gates raved about at Microsoft’s annual financial analysts conference.
I can’t help but reflect on the great innovations we’ve had from Microsoft over the years. Microsoft is an aggressive follower. When people begin moving in a particular direction, Microsoft steps out in front of them on the highway, and holds up a sign that says “what you want is easier with Windows”. Time and time again, Microsoft has claimed that new and innovative, even futuristic, technologies will be delivered. Yet in reality, this is not Microsoft’s goal.
Take Internet Explorer for example. There was a time, during the Great Browser Battles, when Microsoft did innovate. Their stated goal was to create better technology and a better “user experience”. Then, upon dominating the Market, Microsoft stops innovating completely. In fact, in recent interviews, Microsoft has even claimed that Internet Explorer development has been virtual “abandoned”. The result? Other browsers are innovative and better, but are saddled with the incredible liability of a very broken and very buggy Internet Explorer that they must remain compatible with.
The result? New browser development “slows down” because of the IE albatross. IE remains strong because of it’s ties to Windows, and web developers everywhere operate at 30% efficiency while better browsers struggle to gain acceptance. This is great for Windows because competitors have more struggles to cope with. Because IE isn’t standards-compliant and other browsers are, it puts a severe roadblock in front of those who want to pitch standards as useful.
All of this is in Microsoft’s interests.
Yet, Microsoft preaches that they are the champion of innovation. In reality, few innovations drive the development of Windows, and it would be a great day indeed if Microsoft were to actually put the actual quality of “user experience” ahead of their claim that Windows delivers it.
July 29th, 2004
Well, Microsoft has finally relased their "Newsbot" beta (read about it here). I read about it on Google news, which I have come to rely upon.
This will be interesting.
At first glance, Microsoft has a lot of catching-up to do. Plus, this is a strange space. Differentiating one site from the other, in terms of content, is challenging. Both "current news" pages have surprisingly little overlap at this point, and the methods used for choice of headlines is, at best, mysterious.
Aside from Google’s headstart, Microsoft has various liabilities in this game.
First, Microsoft has immediately forfieted their right to be trusted. Of the 20 stories on the main page of NewsBot, 9 of them are from MSNBC. Other sources are listed, but the MSNBC story is preferred. Plus, the past two "headline" stories I’ve seen are from MSNBC. If Microsoft is looking to compete with Google News, they will have to work much harder to give the impression of impartiality to their own purposes. In that regard, Microsoft always starts off as a suspect and Newsbot is doing nothing to discourage that view.
Second, Microsoft has a lot of technology catch-up to do. Searching for "Newsbot" on Google News not only retrieves more recent information about the Microsoft product than Microsoft’s own offering. In addition, the Google "consolidation" of multiple sources into a single headline looks uncannily like the kind of thing a human editor would do. It is intelligent, easy to understand, and no space is wasted with multiple "hits" which really are the same information restated by other sources. The first Google News result covers today’s news (with quick and non-distracting links to all related stores), the second article skips back a few days to the next most recent "news event" related to Newsbot.
By contrast, a search on Newsbot for "newsbot" itself, yields a dry and repetitive "search engine result" which contains many redundant result "hits". There is no attempt at automated editorial treatment. It is instantly annoying, and forces you to decide whether the results are relevant or not.
Google has some motivated software engineers with their brains in overdrive—Google News is smart and gets the details right. Microsoft is still trying to explain to their employees why they recently cut benefits to employees while paying shareholder dividends of history-making proportions. Newsbot is very, very green.
Aside from the above, Newsbot shows many "Beta level" problems. It looks terrible in some browsers, and probably great in the browsers "the developers used while creating it". But, beta doesn’t mean what it used to. Customers are quick to judge and if Microsoft improves the release version, they will have to live with the reputation of the Beta for a long time. Google is also Beta, though it has been for two years!!
My quick take…
Google’s strategy: "undercommit and overdeliver"
Microsoft’s: "ship it quick, use our marketing clout, tie it to our other offerings, make it better later".
July 26th, 2004
“There is no question machines will be smarter than people. And we won’t have to think so hard.”
– John Malone, President of TCI, at the 1995 NCTA convention (on the future of television)
Doesn’t it scare you that a major cable network executive could even consider the possibility that Television makes us think? At all?
Last night I watched Big Brother for the first time, at least for any length of time. The conversations I was watching were far less interesting than those I might have at my neighbor’s house. In fact, I really should visit my neighbors more often, at least there would be some mutual interaction. Do you watch this stuff? Do you enjoy it?
A fellow blogger pointed out a new site, ChangeThis, a site founded by a group of authors to publish manifestos about society, media, communication. I read with interest their belief that media, and the control of media, is stripping us the right to free debate, open conversation, intelligent discourse. This is obvious to me. Isn’t it obvious to you?
Read the recent article in Washington Monthly, by Ted Turner. “My Beef With Big Media”. Ted’s knowledge of the issues–the climate of the industry, the obstacles, the way it was and the way it is–it’s all very lucid. Don’t you find it alarming that somebody you consider a media mogul is claiming impotence in the face of current media consolidation?
Are we all just protoplasmic blobs sitting and absorbing? Is it that bad? Perhaps media has plugged directly into the same sensory systems that make drugs and alchohol so appealing. In politics, in life, in movies, especially in television, the most profound effect is a numbing one, running away while standing in one place.
If media is conspiring to turn us into morons, who will tell us about it?
July 24th, 2004
I ran into a VC who has a weblog on typepad. Lately, I’ve been looking for VC’s because I’ve got a new business idea, and (foolish or not), I’m going to raise money and reinvent myself. This is an experiment in doing what I know I’m capable of.
So, I thought, "Hey, I set up that weblog myself with Movable Type 2 years ago". I did. I went back to it. It’s on one of the dozens of servers I own and control, so it was cheap and free. Hmmm. I bet there’s an upgrade to MovableType. Let’s see. Oh look, there is. Lots of options. Do I want to pay? Look down at the bottom of the page, there it is "Don’t want to install any software? 90-day free trial".
I click.
Hey, I’m back at TypePad where I saw Fred’s (the VC) weblog. Serendipity has been running my life lately. So, why bother with my own server, I have enough to do. Time management has been a high-priority for me lately (thank you Alec Mackenzie). I set one up here. Let’s see how it goes.
Why have a weblog? I have no idea at this point. I’m not sure what function they serve. I had a website (Carl and Gary’s Visual Basic Home Page, 1994) which was, for a while, the most visited site for programmers on the web. I think we had 8 million hits a week for a while. I swore to myself "I’m going to start a personal site!" Never happened. I started a web company instead. 10 years later I still don’t have my own site.
Until now.
It may not last. I’ve been doing a lot of "People Networking" lately. Joined Orkut. Looked up myriads of old contacts. I’m steeped in the philosophies of consumer behavior and technology adoption (because of my new project). Reading and filling my brain completely. Maybe a weblog is a chance to "flush" now and then? We’ll see.
