Via Cognews I found “Robot Consumers, Grow Up!” by Lance Ulanoff. His basic premise is that the more that robots look like real humans or animals, the more put off the American consumer is by it. But I couldn’t disagree more with this analysis, and there’s a very different way of looking at it. Read more…
There are a lot of Web 2.0 folks out there competing for the gold medal in online To do list application. There’s a clear winner. It’s Todoist. Why? For starters—and this is precisely why I realized I had to actually blog about the service as opposed to just use it—rather than just import it into my iGoogle home page, I just made it my home page on all my machines. It’s that useful. The first thing I want to see when I wake up is Todoist.
There have been a lot of technology pundits discussing the demise of the desktop—primarily arguing that the desktop is going to get sucked in to the browser. And there has been a lot of conversation about switching from the desktop to “the cloud”—the idea of the network as the computer. In a funny comment in that Wired article I just linked to, Clay Shirky is quoted as saying that when Thomas Watson estimated that the world only needed five computers, his estimate was off by four. It rings true because it is a simple and funny observation, but this new view of the network as the computer is a binary view, problematic because as software engineers still tend to do, the solution takes the user into account second and not first. A user-first outlook for most software demands of it that it be a desktop-cloud hybrid—with good reason. And a desktop-cloud hybrid won’t suck the OS in the browser, it will suck the browser into all the apps that a user has. I want to point out two real successes in this regard first, and then look at gaps in the current software offerings out there.
It’s one of those things that is questionable ethically, but unfortunately the matter is just not covered by the law. Mark Zuckerburg, of Facebook founder fame, is getting sued by several old classmates who say that he stole their idea. From the stories, I’d say it looks like he did, but personally, I take an ideas-are-free stance on this. In fact, I don’t think patents should be issued unless there is a functioning prototype, not vaporware. Getting a patent should be about investing the time and energy into making an invention work, not just thinking of it. I mean, after all, even Edison said that success was 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. I think the perspiration should be rewarded.
I also think the suit is really off the mark because it is utterly beside the point that Facebook has created a social-networking site. Been there, done that. What facebook has managed to do, that no other web site has, is create an intersite applications platform. Even now, as I post this, on my own blog, on my own server, this post is being injected into my Facebook news feed via the awesome Wordbook plugin. It turns out to be a dynamite way to update your friends about your blog. ((I’ve always felt that an email list was just too intrusive)) Perhaps that sounds trivial, but intersite networking through web service APIs is a good chunk of the future of the web. Some folks call it the mashup for short. ((Intersite web service API networking application is such a ridiculous phrase, it would probably net you $100,000 from a VC if you had the balls to say it in front of one.)) The mashup is one thing, establishing a site where regular non-coder folks can essentially create their own mashup page is why you should head over to the Yahoo Buzz Market and buy some Facebook shares. And if they ever go public, they’d be a pretty good real stockmarket bet too.
Moveon.org has once again asked folks to participate in an online petition. Generally speaking, I’m behind what they do, and I especially like it because it is a grass roots movement among the digirati. But I’m afraid I can’t get behind their most recent petition to stop oil companies from price-gouging. It’s not that I think the oil companies aren’t price-gouging—there’s no doubt about that. My problem is that a law of the kind moveon wants will set up the wrong kind of economic incentives that we need for energy independence. It’s not all that often that I’m on the same side as George Will, who has argued that [the government already takes more in taxes than oil companies take in mark-up](](http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660221223,00.html). But to his point, a more productive law would not punish “price-gougers,” but rather force these companies to invest a percentage of their profits into more green alternatives. ((A law against price gouging is indicative of bad laws like laws against pornography in that they are notoriously hard to define. What is price gouging? Should Apple have to face laws against its $500 iphone? No? Because gasoline is a necesstity? After all, it was an inattentive public that allowed gasoline to become a necessity through poor urban and suburban design.)) Punish the oil companies and you’ll see supply reduced as gasoline moves to other faster growing economies. If the supply is reduced the price goes up. In the long run, punitive economic measures like penalizing price-gougers cannot hold.
