One of the topics I first wrote about on this blog (before I even made it public) was the MyspaceTV series Quarterlife. 

Quarterlife was the product of two fairly well known TV producers teaming up to make an hour long series just for MySpace.  I found the idea interesting because the cost was so low and the creators said they would could approximate the look and feel of mainstream TV shows. 

Things took an odd turn when the Writer's Guild Strike got it promoted to Prime Time TV (specifically NBC).  It aired once, but didn't do so well...

NBC has pulled the plug on its Internet-to-TV experiment "Quarterlife" -- a decision that apparently won't bother its creator too much.
After a premiere that pulled in historically low ratings on Tuesday, the series from "My So-Called Life" creators Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick has been pulled from the 9 p.m. Sunday timeslot where it was scheduled to air for the next several weeks. "Deal or No Deal" and a "Law & Order" rerun will fill the hour for the next two weeks.

A lot of people see this as a set back for Web based projects in the future.  To quote Carolyn McCarthy of Cnet's "The Social"

It's undoubtedly a setback for those hoping to see Web video make a clean transition to the living room TV: Quarterlife, the hyped-up Web series from the co-creators of Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life, had a very disappointing network debut on NBC and may be on the chopping block.

With all due respect to the people she's referring to they're dramatically missing the point. 

Network TV is expensive which means they need a lot of people watching it to justify the cost.  That means they must play to several different demographics at once.  This is why you see romance in your Sci-Fi thrillers or action in your family dramas.  They need to draw a wide swath of people.  Cable made niche shows a little more viable through an alternate revenue stream but even cable shows need to draw several million people to get by.

The opportunity in Web based projects is they can play straight to one demographic.  Web shows only need a few hundred thousand viewers to be profitable so they can play strictly to one niche and (hopefully) create a more enjoyable show for that niche. 

So the goal isn't to transition to TV its to be more focused than TV (and hence more enjoyable).  

The promise of Quarterlife was that it was established TV producers who could bring those sensibilities to the Web based world and define a way to film and produce a web based show that would appear to equal the quality of a mainstream show.  Not to make something that could actually exist on mainstream TV (the only reason it ended up on NBC was because the networks were desperate)

That all said this is a set back in another way.  Quarterlife failed on its first episode which means it wasn't that people thought it was bad its that people didn't bother to watch it at all.  This shows that web based video has a nasty stigma attached to it in the eyes of your average viewer.  For the web to become a viable platform for scripted video it will have to overcome that prejudice which is no small task. 

Microsoft's David Treadwell put up a preview of the new Windows Live Platform that will be introduced at the Mix '08 conference.  There's too much to quote but you can read the post here.  I'm planning to withhold judgement until I see the actual release but I did want to put a quick post up to describe my overall feeling about Microsoft's these days.

Back in 1997 the browser war was in full swing.  Version 3.0 of each browser had just come out the year before and both Microsoft and Netscape were readying massive upgrades in their 4.0 products.  At the time people were so fixated on the grudge match between the two companies that I think something got lost in the shuffle. 

Microsoft was actually the good guy. 

One of the long forgotten ironies of the 90s browser war was that Internet Explorer was by far the more standards compliant browser.  Netscape was throwing in proprietary technology everywhere while Microsoft was submitting everything to standards bodies.  I don't mean this as a shot at Netscape or even praise for Microsoft, they were both acting according to their position in the market.  But it is interesting that Microsoft got little credit for doing all the right things.

Now we have another grudge match between Microsoft and Google and while its not exactly the same (Google's a lot more open than Netscape was) I can't help but feel Microsoft is the more open of the two. 

Sure they want to control the plumbing but who doesn't?  Beyond that, someone's going to have to do it.  Why shouldn't Microsoft have my contact information if they're willing to give it back to me anytime I ask?  Why shouldn't I also give them my photos if they're willing to standardize all their API's around AtomPub?

There are people who simply won't accept that Microsoft can do any good.  But anyone else has to admit that Microsoft is moving in the right direction and deserves a little credit for it.  Maybe even a little trust...

Interesting news about Google today.  Here's the quote from Clint Boulton of Google Watch...

Numerous media outlets are covering comScore's Monday report that clicks on Google's paid search links fell 7.5 percent from December 2007 to January. Reporters did the same when IDC two weeks ago reported Google's ad share dipped 0.5 percent.

Is it time to cry recession?

Google made $16.6 billion from online advertising in 2007, so I would agree that Google losing 7.5 percent of its primary financial cash cow would be a big hit to the company coffers if the figure averaged out or grew over 12 months.

It is not a sign that something is wrong with Google or its advertising business per se, not anymore than the search vendor's absurd soar to a $700+ stock share price this summer meant the company had found the fountain of youth. Finance is a fickle fancy.

I agree in that I don't think this says anything about Google.  I expect Google will have a few more flat-to-down quarters but I doubt it will matter.  Google will survive this bubble just as Microsoft, Yahoo and others survived the last.  They have a solid business model that will carry them through. 

The same is not true of a lot of "Web 2.0" companies out there who are counting on ads to get by.

It baffles me how people didn't see this "Web 2.0 bubble" following the same pattern as the "Web 1.0 bubble".  People start advertising on the web, a bunch of web startups popup funded by those ads, the bottom falls out of the ad market and those companies go out of business.  It isn't that difficult.

Yet I still see almost no acknowledgement of this in the blogs.  Worse yet, people are actually treating ad-based models as if they were the only business model.  Just one example was Steve Karp essentially claiming that in relation to the Wall Street Journal's decision to retain their paid content (I wrote a post on it)

Baffles me...

I'm not sure there's any saving the doomed Web 2.0 companies at this point.  If I have any advice it would be start cobbling together a secondary revenue source before things get bad.   Either that or combine with other like minded companies in order to create a compelling ad-network, ad-based revenue models are appropriate in some places.

My real hope here is that, when Web 3.0 rolls around, people will learn to put ad-based revenue into perspective.  Its certainly appropriate in some places but it is not and never has been the be-all-end-all.  Its just one tool in what should be an arsenal of ways to make money.

Declaring bankruptcy is never an easy thing but I'm about to take the plunge...feed bankruptcy that is. 

There comes a point where you look at your feedreader and realize there's no chance you're going to even be able to 1000+ messages.  Particularly when those messages are being replenished every day.  At that point you have little choice but to give up. 

But there's always that lingering doubt...

So you pick at it, check your favorites, try to devise clever ways of arranging the posts in a vain attempt to read the extra ones over a couple weeks time, and then eventually just accept the inevitable and break out the "mark all as read" button. 

Truth is, 990 of those messages were probably ones I could do without anyway.  But I can't escape the feeling that I just flushed 10 great posts down the drain, never to be seen again.  10 thoughts that would have opened my mind in new directions and given me a new perspective on the world. 

It makes you think about how valuable new perspective is and how the blogosphere puts new perspectives out in abundance.  Admitted, the "good post"-to-"junk post" ratio is still pretty low but the sheer number of posts guarantees a few good ones each day. 

That's bigger than I think people give it credit for.  A little over a decade ago people only had access to the opinions of their friends and a handful of journalists that they'd see on  TV. 

Take that in for a second: the previous generation had no way of knowing what people in the next town thought much less what people around the world were thinking.  Having that perspective is a tremendous gift and we're in the first generation that has gotten to enjoy it. 

Its really pretty amazing. 

Anyway, this post was essentially designed so that I could post something quickly while I catch up with life but I kind of like the direction it went in.  A person can have all the riches in the world and be miserable if they can't bring themselves to appreciate what they've got.  You may hear me complain a lot about the blogosphere but there's no doubt its something worthy of appreciation.

Pre-Post Note: I'm Back!  Sadly, 10 days off tends to make work pile up so I probably won't have much time to blog until the weekend though.  Right now I'm running myself ragged.

Luckily, fate provided a stop gap in the form of this post.  Overall, I was pretty proud of my "home-grown-written-in-10-minutes" windows script that automatically put up posts while I was on vacation.  But for some reason this one just didn't make it (while all the others did).  I don't know why but given how busy I've been trying to catch up with things I can't help but see it as fortuitous. 

So without further ado I give you one last pre-packaged post...

This post filled me with such joy that I literally couldn't keep the smile off my face.  Here's the quote...

When I started to post my pictures from Myanmar on Flickr in February 2006, I just thought it was a good way of storing my photos at a cheap price. But then I received one comment, two, three… and people even favorited my pics. Mon dieu, there’s someone somewhere who looks at my photos and takes time to leave some messages!

A French editor saw my photos and asked me if I was OK making a book. (No problemo!) My book was released this Christmas and was number 10 on Amazon.fr last week! Lonely Planet, National Geographic Russia, Get Lost, UNESCO Magazine, etc. bought my pictures thru Flickr. And then, the leading French photography agency Eyedea (Rapho, HoaQI, Gamma) contacted me and signed me few weeks ago!

A lot of the time I think the Internet is just no good.  It amplifies the idiots, drowns out the voices of reason and has largely spawned a society based in narcissism.   

But then I see a post like this and my faith is restored.  It reminds me that, while the Internet may do a lot of bad, it also does a lot of good.  It allows talent to get attention without having to jump through hoops designed to keep it from that attention.

That is a really big deal.

The establishment in any industry doesn't like change.  If you have something that's successful you tend to stick with it even after its success starts to wane because you don't want to deal with the change.  But in doing that you stand in the way of a natural cycle of renewal.  You end up putting barriers in front of up-and-coming talent to prop up the fading established talent.

That's part of what's wrong in many industries.

Don't get me wrong, the up-and-comer who is truly talented will eventually succeeded.  But not before spending a lot of time and energy on fighting their way through a pointless series of obstacles.  A fight that tends to diminish their output once they get through it.

The Internet on the other hand creates as close to an open talent economy as we'll probably ever see.  New talent need only put themselves out there and frequent "virtual places" such as message boards to get their work seen.  By doing that they circumvent the establishment all together and can even develop their own audience. 

More to the point, since the Internet has most industries scared into a tizzy the establishment is more likely to cut new comers a break rather than compete against them.  That means more enjoying new talent for all of us and that's a great thing.

This really bugged me. 

I'm very late to this particular controversy but apparently some talk show host named Cooper Lawrence (whose the first girl I've ever heard of using the name Cooper by the way) came out against the game Mass Effect on Fox News because it uses nudity and a few mild sex scenes.

In retaliation gamers started giving her book a 1 star rating on Amazon.  Here's the quote from Gaming Today...

After hearing the offensive and biased attack against Mass Effect on Fox News, I decided to check out some links on Cooper Lawrence, the psychologist who took part in the biased strike on the game. I came across her book on Amazon.com titled ‘The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace with Your Inner Overachiever’. It was interesting to see that the page was full of one-star reviews of her book mostly coming from gamers. Shawn covered the topic HERE yesterday. This is definitely one of the reasons I love the Internet. She may think that it’s ok to bash a product she has never used and gamers are now bashing a book they have never read to drop her book rating on Amazon.

Isn't "Two wrongs don't make a right" still something we teach to Kindergartners? 

That said lets go over the multiple reasons why this is stupid...

1. It has a destructive effect on the community: By far my biggest annoyance here is the fact that people like this do nothing but take credibility away from the power of a social network.  Amazon eventually had to just delete all the 1 star reviews which robbed the people who actually read the book and didn't like it of their voice (oh, and made the book look better to people in the process)
2. They actually helped her sales: Here's a little life lesson, every time you attack someone en mass you actually draw attention to them.  Mark my words, her sales are going to go up because of this.  So again these idiots did exactly the opposite of what they were trying to do.
3. Newsflash: the News is scripted: The biggest irony here is that Mrs. Lawrence may not even be against this game.  CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and all the others hire pundits to take a side on these type of shows and people who do these debates don't necessarily agree with what they're saying.  They are paid to take a position of "positive" or "negative" and nuance isn't something the networks are interested in.  If you want proof see Mrs. Lawrence's follow up comments here.

I'm sure there are more but that makes my point well enough.  What bothers me about this is the gamers' actions accomplished nothing that they set out to do.  They actually did damage to Amazon's community while helping Mrs. Lawrence sell books.  It never ceases to amaze me how many people will just act without putting any thought into whether their actions do anything to actually accomplish their goal. 

It really does just bother me to no end...

The inspiration for my last post was an excellent article by Tom Lee that echoed a lot of my thoughts on the subject.  Here's a quote...

Although I'm tempted to avoid the baggage that comes with it, this trend does fit pretty comfortably into the push/pull paradigm of the late 90s. I have good reason for that reticence: as anyone who's lived through periods of both thin and fat client triumphalism knows, enthusiasm for different technological approaches is cyclical, driven by whatever applications people consider most exciting at the time, and along the way shoehorning a lot of ill-suited apps into the hot paradigm du jour.

But this time the demand for push protocols is more than just a fad. It's also a sign of our increasing technological sophistication. Polling is no longer an option for a lot of reasons, but all of them have to do with computing's ubiquity: there are too many users, too many devices, and no patience for less than immediate performance. Broadcast was fine when technology was just entertainment; pull was fine when technology was just a supplement to our lives. But now it seems that the network is driving our daily activities, and we can't wait around for it to do so.

It really is a great post and I'd suggest everyone head over and read the whole thing.  What I wanted to add, what I don't think Mr. Lee covers enough, is why this is so important. 

I don't think people grasp just how significant syndication is and what a big part it will play in our lives as time goes on. The nascent point here is that our world is becoming more and more computer based and as that happens we will get more and more opportunities to syndicate data. 

I think this will happen in a few parts.  The first part is what we're in the middle of now.  The world will get closer and closer to having "a PC on every desktop".  As that starts to happen you'll see those PCs being used as more than just glorified typewriters.  One of those additional uses will be to broadcast notifications.  From there that communication will be extended to anyone who would be interested in the information.

So lets take the example of a school.  First the teacher and the principal both get a computer.  Then the school realizes the Teacher can use the PC to document sending little Johnny to the Principal's office.  Soon they'll realize that they can use some sort of "Push" messaging to have the computer inform the Principal to expect Johnny when he's sent.  Finally the school will realize that little Johnny's parents might want to know when he's been sent to the Principal's office and that the computer can deliver a message to their desktop just as easily as it did to the Principal's desktop. 

Then we're off to the races...

Remember that everything is an event.  Whether its your credit card payment being received, the IRS getting your tax return, or a change in your sick relative's heart monitor.  Everything you want to know about your life is an event and eventually every one of those events will be documented in a computer.  Once that happens you're just a chunk of code away from knowing about that event in real time. 

Since the mass adoption of the PC our world has been getting smaller and smaller.  Push based syndication represents the ultimate step in that process as we start to create a world where each person is constantly connected to all the information they care about. 

One topic that has been noticeably missing on this blog is the classic RSS vs. Atom debate.  Some day I'll probably do a quick post on it but I have to admit that the subject doesn't interest me that much.  This is because I realized a while back that it just doesn't matter.

Both are nothing more than short term stop-gaps in the final analysis.

Every gadget or piece of software is backed up by an ideal.  For TV the ideal is to reproduce an image exactly as it is in real life, for an x-ray machine it's to perfectly represent the inside of a human body and for a car it's to move from Point A to Point B in a way comfortable enough that you don't realize you're moving. 

But because technology can't quite match the ideal yet each one of the above examples falls short.  That's something we have to accept in life but that doesn't mean we stop wanting the ideal.  That's why everyone was fine with their normal TVs until HDTV came along.

We accept current limitations but deep down we know they're just a stop-gap until something closer to the ideal comes along.

In that same way  RSS and Atom is a stop-gap.  The ideal they represent is the instantaneous delivery of relevant information to the user. But neither are instantaneous and that is the flaw of "Pull" based technology in general.  Which in turn is why it will eventually be replaced.

So how do we move from one technology to another?  Generally little parts of the technology are created one by one.  Each of these technologies on their own don't solve the problem but eventually someone comes along to tie them all together in a product that works better than the current system.  That solution then replaces the stop-gap with something closer to the ideal. 

Right now we're well into that process on the syndication front.   All the pieces are already there in the form of Cellular Phones, SMS, MMS, Blackberry,Exchange Servers and a plethora of other "push" technologies.  They sit just waiting for someone to string them together into a better solution.  When that happens RSS and Atom are done and since the technology is already widespread we're probably close to the end of RSS/Atom's cycle. 

The only piece not in widespread use yet is the technology on the delivery end.  Have you noticed people have been talking about XMPP a lot lately?

XMPP may not be the answer but the concept is there and eventually a technology similar to it is going to be adopted.  When that  happens "push" is going to rule the day.  I'm not saying "pull" is going to disappear tomorrow but its days are definitely numbered.  So you can debate all you want about RSS vs Atom, in the end technology (as it seems to always do) will solve the conflict for you.  Better to spend your time thinking about the future in my opinion...

Mathew Ingram writes (in response to PBS-Cringe's post)...

Robert X. Cringely, the pseudonymous tech guru who writes a column for PBS, gives us the benefit of his decades of wisdom on the whole Microsoft and Yahoo front in a post entitled The Men Behind The Curtain. Not only does he give us the benefit of his wisdom, in fact, but he spends the first part of the column telling us how he’s going to give us the benefit of his wisdom, and how we should all be damn glad about it.

...

But the big revelation… wait for it… is that Yahoo has been scared ever since it bought Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com for $5.7-billion. So first of all, we’re supposed to believe that a deal the company did almost 10 years ago has kept it from achieving greatness, and second of all we’re supposed to be grateful to Bob for having the wisdom and the insight that it takes to deliver that kind of fascinating tidbit.

I disagree with PBS-Cringe (aka Robert X. Cringely aka Mark Stephens) quite a bit but I think the beauty of his take is his past popularity and how his perceptions (and obviously his contact list) are affected by that.  He may not be right but he represents what a certain group of people (generally the old school Valley types) think.  That's where the value in his piece is. 

He understands the motivation behind one unique piece on the game board even if he doesn't understand the game as a whole.

Do I think Yahoo makes decisions based on a mistake made by a management team that essentially hasn't been around since 1999 (according to the 1999 and 2007 proxy statements)?  No, I don't.  But if you look a little harder you'll see the real gem in his post. 

It shows how the people he represents are still in the 1999 mind set and how much of an influence that era still holds on them.  That, in my opinion, is valuable insight.

On that note, I'm outta here.  I'll be gone on vacation and banned from all things computer for a little while.  I have set up some pre-written posts which should be appearing in my place though.  Hopefully that will tide everyone over until I can indulge my obsession by unleashing an endless stream of SimpleDb based posts on you  get back

Here's the situation.  I'm all packed and ready to go on a little romantic vacation.  A vacation in which I will essentially be banned from the computer. 

So guess what I finally got in my mailbox today (after weeks of delay)...

Amazon SimpleDB Sign-Up Confirmation

--------------------------------------------------------------

Greetings from Amazon Web Services,

Thank you for signing up for Amazon SimpleDB. You can now build innovative and entrepreneurial applications using this and other AWS web services.

You now have immediate access to Amazon SimpleDB. Usage charges will be billed to your account on your next billing date. Please see the Account Activity area of the AWS web site for detailed account information:

<link>

To build your application and make valid web service requests, you'll need your Access Identifiers. Obtain and learn more about Access Identifiers on the AWS web site:

<link>

Thank you for your participation in the Amazon Web Services community. See http://aws.amazon.com for more information.

Sincerely,

Amazon Web Services

This message was produced and distributed by Amazon Web Services LLC, 1200 12th Avenue South, Seattle, Washington 98144-2734

*sigh*