Giving Tumblr a try, for now all posts will be there, at: http://brycebaril.tumblr.com
Ok, oil is expensive and it is creating pain for our economy. Prices are crazy high, vacations are being canceled, companies that rely on fuel are going out bankrupt left and right, mass hysteria -- bad, right?
There could be one hell of a silver lining here; investments in new technology. Not just green technology, which is great and all, but for the most part doesn't solve the problem.
What I am hoping for is money going into replacement technologies. We're not out of oil yet, so we actually have time to develop reasonable replacements without our entire oil-based infrastructure crashing to a halt. If you think prices are high now, wait until there are real production problems.
Here's hoping that prices stay high long enough to actually drive enough money towards replacement technologies to actually make a difference.
I attended the Google Scalability Conference again this year. Hard to say no to a free conference in your home town.
Here's my quick run-down of how it compared to last year:
Talks: Even
Last year I had hoped for more of the talks to be in-depth and technical, this year more were, but their topics weren't as interesting, nor their depth as great as last year's. Both years had a couple of corporate shill type talks.
Food: Advantage '07
Last year's food was amazing, and the full bar afterward had some decent scotch. This year the lunch was deli meat on dry bread, and only beer and wine afterward. But still, both pretty good for a free conference.
Schedule: Advantage '08
Last year's dual-track was annoying, I hate having to choose between two bad sessions or two I want to see. I'm glad they were able to make this year a single-track.
Talking with other conference-goers afterward I asked various people what their number one take-away message was, and didn't get a single answer more than once. That sounds like the sign of a well balanced conference, if also the sign of a conference with nothing too earth-shattering.
My number-one take-away was how many people were negative towards the maidsafe idea. I've had the same idea in the past, along with others along the same vein. I'm still pretty optimistic toward the idea of harnessing the true Internet cloud to create a coop of resources.
Apple announced its new iPhone 3G yesterday, to luke-warm receptions.
While some are foaming at the mouth about it, most are justifiably nonplussed.
Another point of view I saw yesterday claimed the iPhone 3G is 2-3 years behind the times. I'm somewhat inclined to agree here, 3G should have been in the original iPhone, and GPS isn't all that important to me, given what the original was able to do with triangulation. That isn't to go as far as to agree on the 2-3 years behind, in some ways it still leaves its competition in the dust. That being said, the iPhone 3G is just an evolutionary release that brings little of note to the table.
The thing I like the least about what Apple is doing with the iPhone is the Application Store. While I'm not happy about Apple controlling all of the application distribution on the iPhone, what riles me the most is Apple taking 30% of all revenue generated by 3rd party applications. That's a pretty stiff tax for just using their platform! As much as Microsoft has been deemed the 'Evil Empire' they don't charge a thing for anyone to release software for Windows, and if they had there is no way that Windows would be the market leader the way it is today. In my eyes Apple sets sets unprecedented lows here when it comes to milking the developers who might try to enhance their platform.
In the end, I will probably get one, not because I think it is the phone I want, but because it is the best phone for me right now. The rank of features I'm looking for in a phone runs Internet > Phone > Email. If Blackberries had a better internet experience, I would be more strongly considering those. The two projects that I was holding out for were the OpenMoko and Google Android OS. Unfortunately, OpenMoko has been stumbling, and at this point I'm writing it off until next year at the earliest. Google's Android OS has potential as well, but there simply isn't enough out there about it yet, nor any reliable dates.
This is a continuation of my earlier post on Twitter, and hopefully (one of) my last. People frequently ask me what Twitter is all about and why someone would want to use it, so here is my answer for them.
What is Twitter?
Twitter started as a microblogging concept, a personal blog where your entries have to be 140 characters or less. While some people certainly still use it as thus, it appears to have evolved into something else. I see Twitter now as a hybrid between IM and email with a little IRC thrown in for good measure. My guess is this comes from the push nature of twitter, where bogging is generally pull: you send emails and IMs, but you visit blogs or pull in RSS feeds. Now that it is being used as a communication platform, it feels like a worldwide chat room where instead of having to mute people you don't want to hear, you unmute people you do want to hear.
Why would you want to use Twitter?
I'm frequently impressed with how the publicity of Twitter as a communication platform exposes its best features. You can watch stock tips being exchanged, you can get trickle-down publicity from the power users by engaging them in conversation. I only wish I had started using it more seriously when I first created the account. I can attribute multiple signups at MarketOutsider.com to my use of Twitter. If nothing else, whenever I'm downtown, I can usually find some people to grab lunch with me via Twitter.
You do still have to monitor your own quality of service with Twitter. Some users follow as many people as they can, which in my mind is crazy, as you would just inundate yourself with noise. I follow about 70 people, which is about all I can handle. Luckily many of them only say 1 or 2 things a day. I'm told if you have too many followers, it can also be burdensome; every time you say something you get hundreds of replies.
Power users
The users that get the most out of twitter are its elite power users. These are people like @JasonCalacanis who have tens of thousands of followers. These users serve as a sounding board, a set of free labor, a market test group, or any other of a myriad of uses. A few weeks ago Jason asked for comments on a design mock-up for Mahalo, and he got over 500 comments within a couple hours, for FREE. When @therealdvorak couldn't find something on google, he asked his followers and instantly got five messages with exactly what he was looking for, again, for FREE. The ones who are using it well are pulling off the ultimate in marketing, perfectly targeted $0 CPM advertising.
Corporate use
It might be interesting for a large corporation to use an internal version of Twitter to help relay ideas. It's publicity would help keep things open, and encourage others with input or related tasks to be informed where email wouldn't. I wouldn't want to be the first one to accidentally send a message to the public Twitter that was intended for the corporate one, though.
Bots
Twitter's API has made for some interesting bots. @StockTweets follows stock traders on Twitter who share their watchlists and trades. @lotd is a club for people to share song lyrics. @winetweets is a bot that shares people's wine reviews. My feeling is the best twitter bots are still to come.
Summize
The public nature of twitter makes for some interesting analysis. You can use Summize to watch a search term as it happens in Twitter, or get the sentiment expressed by twitter users for a particular subject. Any time you can watch the thoughts and activities of a large group of people in real-time, you can get some interesting network effects.
What is the future of twitter?
I have a feeling that if the concept that makes twitter so viable really starts making it to the mainstream, the concept will have to leave the confines of Twitter's servers. Whether this is in the form of an open standard like email, or an open-source replacement, or what, a single company--especially with Twitter's technical problems--can't and probably shouldn't own a communication platform.
Revenue stream?
Twitter can't operate without income forever, so they will need to find a revenue stream.
There is a potential for an Ad-based revenue model, given users are providing them with information that could be used for targeting, maybe with a potential for mobile location-based advertising to those using twitter over SMS.
They could also consider a freemium model, where those users with high numbers of followers, maybe >10,000 pay a fee. These users will probably be fine with that, as they are the ones who can most easily get value out of Twitter, as described above.
The last option I've considered is having a corporate version that they license for companies to set up their own private Twitter networks. I'm not sure this would really make sense with the whole Twitter concept, but it has potential.
