By Darren Abrecht, McClatchy Interactive
In the recent series of “Get a Mac” ads from Apple, John Hodgman personifies the PC as a boring, gray-suited middle-management type, and few of us care strongly enough to protest. Many of us appreciate Microsoft products for their familiarity or utility, but no one ever really gets excited about them. At least, that was the case until a little over a year ago, when Microsoft began unveiling a series of flashy new products. Suddenly they were eliciting the kind of gasps that techies usually reserve for companies like Apple or Google.
On the hardware side, consider Surface, Microsoft’s tabletop computing project. Imagine a multitouch display—like Apple’s iPhone, but much bigger—set into the form factor of a coffee table. The result is a truly novel computing platform, as different from desktop machines and mobile devices as they are from each other. Multiple users can simultaneously manipulate photos, maps and music using just their fingertips. The device can also interact with objects placed on its surface, including bluetooth-enabled phones.
On the software side, Microsoft has been generating a lot of buzz with a pair of projects from its Live Labs division. Photosynth can stitch together snapshots to build a three-dimensional model of a place. Photos of popular tourist destinations—already available on the web in large numbers—could be scooped up and used to create photo collages that could be “walked” through as if they were virtual worlds.
Meanwhile, Seadragon aims to create an infinitely zoomable graphical user interface. Imagine your collection of photo files arranged as a set of thumbnails on your desktop. Instead of opening a photo by clicking, you could just zoom in to view the photo in full resolution. When you’re done, zoom out, and keep zooming, until your entire collection of files becomes visible as if viewed from miles high.
These forward-looking initiatives will take real risks in being brought to the marketplace, which makes it all the more amazing that they’re being produced by Microsoft. The company has a well-earned reputation for waiting on the sidelines of an emerging market, letting smaller, nimbler companies absorb the risks of development, before hopping in and throwing its weight around to become a dominant player in the space.
Critics of the company refer to its “embrace-extend-extinguish” strategy: Microsoft adopts an established technology, produces a proprietary version that’s only partially compatible with existing standards, and then leverages its near-monopoly on the desktop to establish its own version as the new, de facto standard. The result is that companies which previously dominated the market find themselves marginalized.
Examples?
Novell, which produced the WordPerfect word processor in the mid-90s, claims that Microsoft’s Office suite made use of undocumented features of Windows which allowed it to out-perform competing office products. WordPerfect, the industry-standard word processor of the DOS era, faded into obscurity as Microsoft Word ascended.
Netscape claimed in Microsoft’s U.S. antitrust trial that the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows amounted to unfair competition. Netscape’s browser, released earlier and at one time the most popular, has gone the way of WordPerfect.
The products underlying Microsoft’s other core businesses—Windows, Windows Mobile, MSN, the XBox—were late entries to the worlds of graphical operating systems, mobile operating systems, web portals and gaming consoles.
So how does one explain the two faces of Microsoft? With nearly 79,000 employees and a diverse product line, Microsoft is a galaxy of a corporation that can, at times, seem to lack a unified corporate voice. One thing is for certain: unless a project wins the support of the larger corporate culture, it will wither on the vine, regardless of the plaudits it receives from outsiders.
Consider the fate of Internet Explorer for Macintosh. When version 5 was released in 2000, it was widely praised as one of the best web browsers on any platform—the rare example of a Microsoft product for Macs that exceeded the Windows version. Then as now, the kind of people who usually take digs at Microsoft were giving the company a second look. But after the initial release, developers were diverted from the project, and the browser quickly began to lag behind the competition. Only minor updates and bug fixes followed until 2003, when Microsoft axed it.
The forces driving the new, radical innovation within Microsoft are swimming upstream against a culture deeply invested in the embrace-extend-extinguish strategy. It’s too soon to tell whether we’re seeing a new Microsoft or just a flash in the pan.
© 2007 McClatchy. Reprinted with permission.
Showing posts with label column. Show all posts
Showing posts with label column. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
After the Net comes the Mesh?
By Darren Abrecht, McClatchy Interactive
Wireless mesh networks hold promise for lowering barriers to network connectivity. They also hold the potential to alter the balance of power in cyberspace, and revive the hopes of those who once believed that the Internet could provide a forum for open communication beyond the reach of corporate or government censorship.
Verizon and AT&T have both expressed interest in bidding on wireless spectrum in the FCC’s January 2008 auction. So has Google. Many analysts see this unusual move as a ploy to force the telecoms to observe open access rules which Google supports but which the telecoms oppose. However, at least one technology pundit, PBS’s Robert Cringely, believes that Google is planning to use the spectrum to build a large-scale mesh network and bring wireless broadband to the masses.
Meshes behave differently than the communications networks we’re familiar with. In our existing communication infrastructure, most client devices connect directly to a service provider’s network. When you make a cell phone call, for instance, the first stop for the signal after leaving your handset is your carrier’s nearest tower. If your phone can’t find a tower owned by your carrier or one of its roaming partners, you don’t get to make the phone call.
With a wireless mesh, however, other client devices become links in the communication infrastructure. A cell phone that was part of a mesh network wouldn’t necessarily be stranded if it couldn’t find a tower right away. It could search for other cell phones within range, and then bounce a signal from mobile to mobile until it found a tower. If the person you’re trying to call isn’t too far away, you might be able to connect to them without even using a tower. A Swedish company called TerraNet is trying out a cell phone system based on this concept. TerraNet phone calls, which are free, are routed using only other cell phones and the Internet.
The same principle has been used to extend the range of Wi-Fi Internet access points. MIT is working with the city of Cambridge, Mass., to provide free Internet access throughout the city by means of a wireless mesh. A company called Meraki is doing the same for San Francisco. Meraki is partially funded by Google, adding fuel to the rumor of a wireless ‘Googlenet.’
While a mesh network can provide a route to the Internet backbone, using a mesh to connect individual users in a peer-to-peer fashion may prove to be the more revolutionary application. The One Laptop Per Child project plans for its devices to be used in this way, communicating directly with each other to enable chat, voice-over-IP, and project collaboration without accessing the Internet.
Bringing the power of social computing to the world’s poor is just one revolution that mesh networking could bring about. If everyone used their laptop as a server, client and router, it just might breathe life back into the dream, once held by many, that the Internet could be a positive force for liberty.
In 1996, early in the Internet’s explosion as a popular medium and just prior to its broad commercialization, activist and Electronic Frontier Foundation founder John Perry Barlow released “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” a cyber-libertarian manifesto. Addressed to the “governments of the Industrial World,” the declaration asserted the identity of the Internet as an autonomous democratic community, exempt from the authority of existing governments.
The declaration was widely read and its sentiments broadly shared among early adopters. However, the Wild West of the early Web was not to last. Its independence was a consequence of the cultural gap between computing enthusiasts and authority figures, not an intrinsic feature of the Net itself. No one has believed in the independence of cyberspace since the government of the world’s most populous nation erected the “Great Firewall of China”—an electronic censor monitoring all Net traffic in that country—to restrict the free flow of ideas to its people.
In the U.S., the government and Internet backbone corporations have worked together to compromise civil liberties, often using copyright, pornography and terrorism as pretexts to invade the privacy of civilians. AT&T is the target of a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company collaborated with the NSA to illegally spy on American citizens. A federal judge has ruled the lawsuit may go forward, despite the government’s attempt to have it dismissed on state secret grounds.
Wireless mesh networks could allow users to communicate by routing signals through computers held by private citizens, without the need to pass through a backbone controlled by corrupt government and corporate entities. The result would be to wrest control of the infrastructure from powerful interests and bring it under the domain of the public good.
©2007 McClatchy. Reprinted with permission.
Wireless mesh networks hold promise for lowering barriers to network connectivity. They also hold the potential to alter the balance of power in cyberspace, and revive the hopes of those who once believed that the Internet could provide a forum for open communication beyond the reach of corporate or government censorship.
Verizon and AT&T have both expressed interest in bidding on wireless spectrum in the FCC’s January 2008 auction. So has Google. Many analysts see this unusual move as a ploy to force the telecoms to observe open access rules which Google supports but which the telecoms oppose. However, at least one technology pundit, PBS’s Robert Cringely, believes that Google is planning to use the spectrum to build a large-scale mesh network and bring wireless broadband to the masses.
Meshes behave differently than the communications networks we’re familiar with. In our existing communication infrastructure, most client devices connect directly to a service provider’s network. When you make a cell phone call, for instance, the first stop for the signal after leaving your handset is your carrier’s nearest tower. If your phone can’t find a tower owned by your carrier or one of its roaming partners, you don’t get to make the phone call.
With a wireless mesh, however, other client devices become links in the communication infrastructure. A cell phone that was part of a mesh network wouldn’t necessarily be stranded if it couldn’t find a tower right away. It could search for other cell phones within range, and then bounce a signal from mobile to mobile until it found a tower. If the person you’re trying to call isn’t too far away, you might be able to connect to them without even using a tower. A Swedish company called TerraNet is trying out a cell phone system based on this concept. TerraNet phone calls, which are free, are routed using only other cell phones and the Internet.
The same principle has been used to extend the range of Wi-Fi Internet access points. MIT is working with the city of Cambridge, Mass., to provide free Internet access throughout the city by means of a wireless mesh. A company called Meraki is doing the same for San Francisco. Meraki is partially funded by Google, adding fuel to the rumor of a wireless ‘Googlenet.’
While a mesh network can provide a route to the Internet backbone, using a mesh to connect individual users in a peer-to-peer fashion may prove to be the more revolutionary application. The One Laptop Per Child project plans for its devices to be used in this way, communicating directly with each other to enable chat, voice-over-IP, and project collaboration without accessing the Internet.
Bringing the power of social computing to the world’s poor is just one revolution that mesh networking could bring about. If everyone used their laptop as a server, client and router, it just might breathe life back into the dream, once held by many, that the Internet could be a positive force for liberty.
In 1996, early in the Internet’s explosion as a popular medium and just prior to its broad commercialization, activist and Electronic Frontier Foundation founder John Perry Barlow released “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” a cyber-libertarian manifesto. Addressed to the “governments of the Industrial World,” the declaration asserted the identity of the Internet as an autonomous democratic community, exempt from the authority of existing governments.
The declaration was widely read and its sentiments broadly shared among early adopters. However, the Wild West of the early Web was not to last. Its independence was a consequence of the cultural gap between computing enthusiasts and authority figures, not an intrinsic feature of the Net itself. No one has believed in the independence of cyberspace since the government of the world’s most populous nation erected the “Great Firewall of China”—an electronic censor monitoring all Net traffic in that country—to restrict the free flow of ideas to its people.
In the U.S., the government and Internet backbone corporations have worked together to compromise civil liberties, often using copyright, pornography and terrorism as pretexts to invade the privacy of civilians. AT&T is the target of a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company collaborated with the NSA to illegally spy on American citizens. A federal judge has ruled the lawsuit may go forward, despite the government’s attempt to have it dismissed on state secret grounds.
Wireless mesh networks could allow users to communicate by routing signals through computers held by private citizens, without the need to pass through a backbone controlled by corrupt government and corporate entities. The result would be to wrest control of the infrastructure from powerful interests and bring it under the domain of the public good.
©2007 McClatchy. Reprinted with permission.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The uber-gadget, deferred
By Darren Abrecht, McClatchy Interactive
Two years ago, while working and studying in Boston, I considered buying a PDA but decided to wait. I had limited space in my pack and already had to contend with a cell phone, mp3 player, digital camera, and laptop. The U.S. Army Survival Manual advises:
“In preparing your survival kit, select items you can use for more than one purpose. If you have two items that will serve the same function, pick the one you can use for another function.”
In this case, what’s good for the soldier is good for the urban commuter. At the time, I could look at the trend lines of converging device functionality and predict that, in a year or two, I would be able to replace my aging gadget fleet with a single lump of shiny plastic. This uber-gadget would perform the functions of the PDA, cell phone, internet communicator, digital music player and camera well enough for serious everyday use, even if not as well as an agglomeration of dedicated devices.
The Apple iPhone debuts at the end of this month as the much-hyped fulfillment of convergence manifest destiny. Does its advent signal a brave new era of pants with only one bulging pocket?
Alas. As I was watching my brother-in-law trying to connect his Nintendo DS to my home wireless network the other day, it occurred to me that the reality of the situation is—and could only ever have been—something quite different. While the iPhone or a similar device would allow me to do away with all the little lumps of plastic in my life, no single gadget could ever be everyone’s end-all. While many people carry around multiple pieces of personal tech, most of them have a go-to device, closer to their hearts and the center of their digital lives than the others. Ask yourself: if you could take only one gadget with you, which would it be? For most people, this would be a cell phone. For others, it might be a music player, GPS device, or handheld game console.
Instead of a single class of uber-gadget, what seems to be emerging is a plurality of multifunction device types, each organized around a different primary function. Even the iPhone is, first and foremost, a cell phone—a point underscored by Steve Jobs at its announcement, when he declared that its “killer app” is making phone calls.
Whatever your gadget of choice, the odds are good that beyond its primary function it can do many of the things that other devices can do. A few years out, devices like your favorite will almost certainly continue to exist as a class—and will take on more and more functionality that overlaps with other device classes.
Who knows? Some day, we might even see an iPod with a built-in FM radio.
©2007 McClatchy. Reprinted with permission.
Two years ago, while working and studying in Boston, I considered buying a PDA but decided to wait. I had limited space in my pack and already had to contend with a cell phone, mp3 player, digital camera, and laptop. The U.S. Army Survival Manual advises:
“In preparing your survival kit, select items you can use for more than one purpose. If you have two items that will serve the same function, pick the one you can use for another function.”
In this case, what’s good for the soldier is good for the urban commuter. At the time, I could look at the trend lines of converging device functionality and predict that, in a year or two, I would be able to replace my aging gadget fleet with a single lump of shiny plastic. This uber-gadget would perform the functions of the PDA, cell phone, internet communicator, digital music player and camera well enough for serious everyday use, even if not as well as an agglomeration of dedicated devices.
The Apple iPhone debuts at the end of this month as the much-hyped fulfillment of convergence manifest destiny. Does its advent signal a brave new era of pants with only one bulging pocket?
Alas. As I was watching my brother-in-law trying to connect his Nintendo DS to my home wireless network the other day, it occurred to me that the reality of the situation is—and could only ever have been—something quite different. While the iPhone or a similar device would allow me to do away with all the little lumps of plastic in my life, no single gadget could ever be everyone’s end-all. While many people carry around multiple pieces of personal tech, most of them have a go-to device, closer to their hearts and the center of their digital lives than the others. Ask yourself: if you could take only one gadget with you, which would it be? For most people, this would be a cell phone. For others, it might be a music player, GPS device, or handheld game console.
Instead of a single class of uber-gadget, what seems to be emerging is a plurality of multifunction device types, each organized around a different primary function. Even the iPhone is, first and foremost, a cell phone—a point underscored by Steve Jobs at its announcement, when he declared that its “killer app” is making phone calls.
Whatever your gadget of choice, the odds are good that beyond its primary function it can do many of the things that other devices can do. A few years out, devices like your favorite will almost certainly continue to exist as a class—and will take on more and more functionality that overlaps with other device classes.
Who knows? Some day, we might even see an iPod with a built-in FM radio.
©2007 McClatchy. Reprinted with permission.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Moving merchandise like media
By Darren Abrecht, McClatchy Interactive
There is something about shopping online that makes obtaining physical things feel a lot like obtaining information: click, click, get this weekend’s weather report; click, click, get a pair of sunglasses. With just a few more clicks, you can compare prices on the same item at different stores, see the rest of the manufacturer’s product line, or view similar items from other manufacturers.
This way of shopping is tremendously liberating, a point that was driven home for me one day when I was standing in front of the wall of small kitchen items at Target, shopping for a basting brush. I realized suddenly that all of the products were sorted by manufacturer, meaning that if I wanted to compare basting brushes, I had to search up and down the entire wall. I wanted to click the top of a column and change the sorting options on my search results.
With the exception of a few items that truly need to be seen in the flesh, I would gladly buy everything online. The only thing that prevents me—and, I suspect, many others—from taking that leap is the high cost of shipping. The lower sticker prices that can often be found online are offset by the price of getting it to your door, especially in the case of anything larger than a bread basket.
This is the point at which the physicality of the thing you’re trying to “download” comes back into sharp focus. You can pay more to get it there faster, or pay less if you’re willing to wait, but you will have to pay to get it there. While different studies give different figures for the percentage of virtual shopping carts abandoned over “shipping shock,” all of the numbers are big ones. Finding a way to reduce the cost of shipping is a major challenge for the online retail industry.
Of course, moving data around isn’t free, either, despite appearances. Not only does the user have to pay for access, publishers also have to pay for the bandwidth their visitors use. But getting information online “feels free” in a way that getting objects shipped to your door doesn’t.
A recent story from Wired News presents an opportunity to think about these two very different species of deliverables in similar terms. Google and the Space Telescope Science Institute were trying to move a 120-terabyte repository of data from the Institute’s servers to its new home on Google’s. As anyone who has ever had a too-large e-mail attachment dropped en route could tell you, the Internet is woefully suited for data transfer on that magnitude.
Google’s solution, christened “FedExNet,” was to ship an array of empty hard drives to the scientists, who shipped them back full. Commentators on various Internet community sites were quick to dig up a quote, attributed to computer scientist Andrew Tanenbaum: “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.”
All this serves to remind us that it was only very recently that the commercial distribution of data came to be separable in principle from the movement of discrete physical objects. Newsprint, strips of magnetic tape, and plastic platters are still with us, but their importance is steadily diminishing. Not so long ago, they were the only game in town.
The story serves to remind us, too, that the Internet, revolutionary though it may be, is just the latest in a series of vascular networks built to faciliate communication and commerce between far-flung groups of people. Each of these networks—the highway system, the telephone lines, the railways, to name a few—has its own unique characteristics. Nonetheless, they share certain essential similarities that present opportunities to think about them in similar terms, such that it becomes meaningful to discuss the bandwidth of a station wagon.
Given these similarities, is there anything that can be learned from the business models of content distributors that could make moving boxes down the highway “feel free” for the end-user? This may seem an odd question to ask, given that web content has been notoriously difficult to monetize. But to the extent that it has generated revenue, it has done so by adapting techniques from older, more established content distribution models. These techniques have already proven their worth at paying for shipping, because they date from the plastic-and-paper era, when consumer-sized portions of content had to be shipped, just like Google’s hard drives or that set of cutlery you just ordered.
The first and most obvious of these techniques is bundled advertising. How much would a manufacturer pay for you to find their insert as you open your package and remember that, in addition to the new sweater, you will also need a pair of mittens? Most large retailers already keep extensive data on what items are likely to be purchased together, so enabling targeted advertising of this sort would require very little additional investment. The ads could be used to subsidize shipping, perhaps allowing a broader range of items to be shipped free-of-charge.
A second technique, the subscription model, is already being tested in a new program at Amazon. The service, called Amazon Prime, takes a cue from the free-content illusion associated with a home internet subscription. Internet content feels free because you pay the same, easily-forgotten price whether you download 100 gigabytes or 5. Amazon Prime translates this logic to the highway. Sign up for the service, and you pay $79 for a year of free, two-day shipping on all purchases, with a few exceptions.
Amazon has a history of pioneering innovative methods for dealing with the high cost of shipping. They were among the first to offer free shipping on certain items or purchases above a certain price threshhold, now standard industry practices. Although some experimentation will be necessary to find the proper price-point for a service such as this, I predict that applying the subscription model to shipping will pay off both for Amazon and for other online retailers who follow in its footsteps.
©2007 McClatchy. Reprinted with permission.
There is something about shopping online that makes obtaining physical things feel a lot like obtaining information: click, click, get this weekend’s weather report; click, click, get a pair of sunglasses. With just a few more clicks, you can compare prices on the same item at different stores, see the rest of the manufacturer’s product line, or view similar items from other manufacturers.
This way of shopping is tremendously liberating, a point that was driven home for me one day when I was standing in front of the wall of small kitchen items at Target, shopping for a basting brush. I realized suddenly that all of the products were sorted by manufacturer, meaning that if I wanted to compare basting brushes, I had to search up and down the entire wall. I wanted to click the top of a column and change the sorting options on my search results.
With the exception of a few items that truly need to be seen in the flesh, I would gladly buy everything online. The only thing that prevents me—and, I suspect, many others—from taking that leap is the high cost of shipping. The lower sticker prices that can often be found online are offset by the price of getting it to your door, especially in the case of anything larger than a bread basket.
This is the point at which the physicality of the thing you’re trying to “download” comes back into sharp focus. You can pay more to get it there faster, or pay less if you’re willing to wait, but you will have to pay to get it there. While different studies give different figures for the percentage of virtual shopping carts abandoned over “shipping shock,” all of the numbers are big ones. Finding a way to reduce the cost of shipping is a major challenge for the online retail industry.
Of course, moving data around isn’t free, either, despite appearances. Not only does the user have to pay for access, publishers also have to pay for the bandwidth their visitors use. But getting information online “feels free” in a way that getting objects shipped to your door doesn’t.
A recent story from Wired News presents an opportunity to think about these two very different species of deliverables in similar terms. Google and the Space Telescope Science Institute were trying to move a 120-terabyte repository of data from the Institute’s servers to its new home on Google’s. As anyone who has ever had a too-large e-mail attachment dropped en route could tell you, the Internet is woefully suited for data transfer on that magnitude.
Google’s solution, christened “FedExNet,” was to ship an array of empty hard drives to the scientists, who shipped them back full. Commentators on various Internet community sites were quick to dig up a quote, attributed to computer scientist Andrew Tanenbaum: “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.”
All this serves to remind us that it was only very recently that the commercial distribution of data came to be separable in principle from the movement of discrete physical objects. Newsprint, strips of magnetic tape, and plastic platters are still with us, but their importance is steadily diminishing. Not so long ago, they were the only game in town.
The story serves to remind us, too, that the Internet, revolutionary though it may be, is just the latest in a series of vascular networks built to faciliate communication and commerce between far-flung groups of people. Each of these networks—the highway system, the telephone lines, the railways, to name a few—has its own unique characteristics. Nonetheless, they share certain essential similarities that present opportunities to think about them in similar terms, such that it becomes meaningful to discuss the bandwidth of a station wagon.
Given these similarities, is there anything that can be learned from the business models of content distributors that could make moving boxes down the highway “feel free” for the end-user? This may seem an odd question to ask, given that web content has been notoriously difficult to monetize. But to the extent that it has generated revenue, it has done so by adapting techniques from older, more established content distribution models. These techniques have already proven their worth at paying for shipping, because they date from the plastic-and-paper era, when consumer-sized portions of content had to be shipped, just like Google’s hard drives or that set of cutlery you just ordered.
The first and most obvious of these techniques is bundled advertising. How much would a manufacturer pay for you to find their insert as you open your package and remember that, in addition to the new sweater, you will also need a pair of mittens? Most large retailers already keep extensive data on what items are likely to be purchased together, so enabling targeted advertising of this sort would require very little additional investment. The ads could be used to subsidize shipping, perhaps allowing a broader range of items to be shipped free-of-charge.
A second technique, the subscription model, is already being tested in a new program at Amazon. The service, called Amazon Prime, takes a cue from the free-content illusion associated with a home internet subscription. Internet content feels free because you pay the same, easily-forgotten price whether you download 100 gigabytes or 5. Amazon Prime translates this logic to the highway. Sign up for the service, and you pay $79 for a year of free, two-day shipping on all purchases, with a few exceptions.
Amazon has a history of pioneering innovative methods for dealing with the high cost of shipping. They were among the first to offer free shipping on certain items or purchases above a certain price threshhold, now standard industry practices. Although some experimentation will be necessary to find the proper price-point for a service such as this, I predict that applying the subscription model to shipping will pay off both for Amazon and for other online retailers who follow in its footsteps.
©2007 McClatchy. Reprinted with permission.
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