Yi Tan Tech Conference Call - twitter

Social Network/twitter top with Ev Williams, Howard Greenstein (Social Media Club), Deb Schultz, Ben Rattay (change.org)

Ev talking about twitter is a social networking tool, SMS less. All sites will eventually be SMS. Categorization as a social network is becoming increasingly helpful.

SMS as it gets blends in and gets mainstream.

OpenID is becoming more mainstream.

Change.org - give people a way to get involved with activities with change.org

Alot of sites are becoming really good at one service, and not being ubiquitous. Valuation is equal to number of names/email addresses/mobile numbers.

Joining each social network is the heavy lifting - not really - in each social network,

Social network is already in your address book.

Uber-networking services: sixdegrees.com - never got to the opportunity.

Ben: Dopplr and no specific value. Couldn't LinkedIn/Facebook do it? Not easily - it is about information architecture. Could so a crossover of stuff since it will never be good enough as using Yelp.

Are we see an explosion of innovation and variety - and the one with the best "information architecture" - Yelp adds compliments for social credit. Basic functionality is the same, but the community incentives determine the "feel" of the site.

Deb: architecture helps to define culture. The hub and spoke mentality (Facebook) versus OpenID which is owned by the individual. The architecture helps determine the "temperature" in the room.

Jerry: open architecture allows the platform to be used into other services/repurposed functions (e.g. LinkedIn could not easily be used to become Yelp).

Plasticity: can the products be made to be plastic. Ev: big fan of being a very focused product. twitter is just the right balance of focus and openness. Too many people widen the product they build too quickly, and do not stay focused.

twitter is gearing toward the usual crowd - maybe when the size grows, it will skew more toward the younger crowd (Sanford's opinion - nah)

Likely business models of social networks three years from now?

GoodContacts: multiple business cards. Allowing people to have multiple identities.
Experimenting on the "patterns in the wild"

No physical/tangible metaphor in the "real world" - it is a verb, not a noun. Ev: look at "blogging" - it is now in Microsoft Word. So, the features migrate to the main process.

TRIZ invention (see wikipedia)

Is this some federation of peer-to-peer data collaboration? Ben: very similar to NetVibes model. Allow you to see the niche services in one place. The incentives in the big companies will keep from being "open" - big companies are very, very proprietary. We do not want one big social network - I go to a social network because I want "something", I do not want a big bloated social network.

Yi-Tan Tech Conference Call - Space Travel

Conversation about space travel with Esther Dyson:

1) Where have you got your interest in space travel initially?
There are three magic reasons: father built a rocket ship, dot.comers are now moving into space. The Silicon Valley is the remainder of the "truth" - really hard work and creates all the value. Love frontiers - Eastern Europe. This is the new frontier.

Following Elon Musk - X-Prize people are using their own money - no one can complain if they waste that.

2) What is the landscape for institutional investors?
In the realm of air-taxis in space. When she did FedEx, the rounds of money - the round three people made money, but would not have been in round three if they were not in round one and two. She is an investor in Zero-G and Space Adventures which are quite ready for institutional investors. Someone will more than likely die - which will shake out the companies/industries. She is going out to Russia to watch Charles (the guy who wrote Microsoft Word) launch into space. Fee: $25M.

SpaceX, Virtual Composite - building rockets. Still a way to go.

3) When will this start to materialize? How many years from now when we see space differently?
It is here, just early. Five years from now, will be a small launch of effort.

4) What role has the X-Prize been responsible for this?
Clever form of financing - $10M purse. Not only did it encourage numerous teams, but it was also funded with a $3M insurance policy. Very creative financing.

5) What is the role of the "priesthood", the establishment?
NASA - is, in part, encouraging private enterprise. But still a frictional component. NASA funds interesting research, financial markets fund real projects.
Large companies (Lockheeds, Boeings) - not used to dealing with small companies. Environment is hostile to indifferent.

6) Why space and not under the oceans?
Space is just much more romantic - the ocean is swimming and getting wet. Space is freedom and liberation. While we may be wrong - that the oceans are also the same sense of freedom and liberation. The Whole Earth Catalog is about space. Photo spurred on the ecology movement.

7) What are the reasons to go into space? Mine resources? Travel speed?
All and other than the sheer pleasure. We may want to do terraforming - terraforming Mars: can not do it with machines, must do it with biology. Why not do it on Earth to fix global warming? Because there are people here and if we help people on one side, we might hurt on the others. Might need the "extra space".

Pip: over the past 5-10 years, have there been 2 or 3 "ah-ha" moments on this problem that could be looked at in a different fashion?
Still love the "space elevator" - just create an elevator instead of rockets to get into space.
Essence of space tourism are people who have more money than time.

8) Is this going to change our moving from point A to point B? Did we miss the intercontinental boat?
Air taxis speed things up immensely. Supersonics will speed things up if you go up high enough.
Nova Spivak on one of the MIG flights that took him up to the stratosphere.

9) What will this do to "earth culture"?
Creates a new sense of possibility, in the end, people will perceive borders differently. Tremendously exciting - still places we have not explored. Draw the attention of kids to space and science - key to our success in the future.

10) If we had a backup planet, will be end up taking care of our planet less?
Poor people usually are the ones who move on - to push the bounds.

David Spector: The Bush Adminstration will control space for American interests at all costs? When will the conflict occur with the military and the private interests and what will the outcome be?
Space race is now between us and the Chinese. US will have a hard time thinking they have control of space. They simply do not have control over it - and there is no legitimate claim.

Everyone going into space, forcing Americans and Russian to work together. The Russian government is acting like a commercial player. No private ventures happening.

She loves the zero-G flights - feels like swimming with flippers.

Had to leave for another meeting...

Yi-Tan Tech Conference Call - Climate Change

Jerry: "It's not Easy Being Green"

Climate Change - speaker: John Holdren

Pip on the issue: for the past couple of years, have been watching the issue - watching/evaluating monumental shifts from thought to idea to action. One of the statistics last year was the number of mentions of global warming and alternative energy - # of mentions of global warming and alternative energy was flat in 2005, 2006 altNRG went from 70% and global change 260% - cement is happening.

Effect for business re business change is going to be more impactful on business - down to the minutia (washing towels). When are clients going to feel "icky" when you fly around the world for the client call.

Political tipping point on climate changes - including the drumbeat of science (every day an article showing changes are coming out more frequently) being reinforced on personal experiences and reinforced on TV and the blogs. Rapidly changing attitudes in the business world and showing in the ads - and the religious change. US government changing POV from pre 2005 (not going to sign Kyoto if China not there) to post-2005 (Senate resolution very different).

Economic change - will finally get action in 2009 - some form of carbon tax - it is now an irresistible force. Systems effect is changing - first order effects (geophysical), second order (biophysical) to third order (disease vectors) to four order (how it impacts US). Blerb from Peter Schwartz.

How is this impacting us today? Energy economy climate nexus - sits in the middle of economics, politics, technology and others. Can not understand this problem unless we look at the problem from all sides of the issue. The more of those pieces one thinks about, the more challenging this problem becomes. Greater the number of areas of knowledge grows the level of concern - this is systematic symptoms.

What organizations are getting traction on this now? John: in the private sector - this challenge is not a threat, but an opportunity. GE, Alcoa, Duke Energy, etc coming out claiming a need to have the government regulate greenhouse gases. They see that government policy is inevitable, they also see that there is an opportunity. There is an overall change in the business community. Pulls the run out from the naysayers. GlobalWarmingRealEstate.com - a wiki spoof site.

David Isen: Some of the positive feedback loops that could accelerate the issues? John: Jim Hansen is taking serious action - issues are becoming more likely. One of the feedback effects is the melting of the ice in the Artic, then the highly reflective ice is replaced by highly absorbing water - which is a positive feedback look accelerating the temperature. Fate of the carbon in the permafrost and tundra as there is in the atmosphere. If there is a major defrosting of the tundra, we could have a pulse of drastic CO2 content and methane in the atmosphere which could have a pulse effect.

Howard: disproving the skeptics. John: skeptics are in retreat. The only danger is that skeptics can make a comment in one sentence, where it takes paragraphs to reverse the comment. But now, people are behind it. Pip: people are

Judy: cold futures - more desirable 2025: how can we weather global climate change. Came up with a dozen strategies. How can we actually do the things we need to do - Millennium Development Goals. John: for the UN, climate change - Confronting Climate Change on the UN website. Talks about the synergisms and the win-win tactics that can be applied to adapt and accelerate the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals FAST. Huge amount of leverage in energy end use - REDUCE the amount of energy we use.

Example of a win-win: reducing the black soot emissions from two-stroke and burning - BIG impact on the action. Immediate benefits on health.

John summary: must address this problem - it will not wreck the economy to fix it, it will if we do not.

Pip: consuming less is a big deal - without making a big difference. Corporates have a huge impact. Can control the moral level - they are not all BAD people - they can help the company and the shareholders. Governments - thinking either or versus and. And helping people who need it now (thinking globally).

Lots of people have been trying to make social issues into the business. GRI - confluence of libertarian (what is needed for the business) and the measure of success of a business in the long-run.

Carbon-0ffsets - very difficult for consumers to determine how to consume less. Intrigued by the idea of buying your way to carbon neutrality. People find it difficult as a way to contribute or to make happen. A lot of people do not want to put into the switching costs, they are willing to buy their way out of them. People can buy "green power" which supports geothermal, solar and wind which can provide a revenue stream to build up green power.

A book I read: Power to the People, by Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran. Gives a lot of thought into issues at hand - including distributed power generation and the issues people have been addressing. Vijay is switching over from power to other topics, but is still at the Economist.

Don't overlook the people in the second half of their life - they want to be able to give back both in business and in popular culture. A whole spectra of activities - boomers may want to be remembered as the peopel who made the first effort in solving this problem.

American Chemical Society - sustainability of food and water, various scientific organizations are building momentum.

Yi-Tan : Software Development Challenges

Scott Rosenberg - why isn't software easy?

Scope of the project: tell the story of six different projects. Is software as hard as it seems and why?

Complexity of the project was so difficult - almost impossible. Became a story of a project that was in trouble and incomplete - and that is the way it happened.

Jerry: spellbound

Why are projects so difficult to manage, why are budgets so overrun? He followed Chandler from 2003 to 2005/6. Just around the time of Web 2.0 happening. Chandler knew this was happening which caused them to change course. Also followed

Web 2.0 is proof of concepts - almost all in perpetual beta state. When it becomes "successful" - big one buys it up and then either improves it or destroys it (e.g. myspace technical challenges)

Broadest conclusion - be humble - there are huge swamps and trouble ahead. Know the history, know what has happened - the biggest pragmatic take-away - work incrementally. Get som ething running quickly, feedback loop with users, etcera. Grand plan is almost impossible thing to complete in software.

People seem to have the "principle of exception" - yes, that is true, but! - people tend to exempt themselves from the reality around.

Al Chang - talking about browsers - client software is a challenge. Very important to pick the "right model".

Scott: when you select a form (like a sonnet in poetry), you can make it happen. Free verse - you get lost.

Al - when you think as a screenplay, then all of the players have to play to the script. Novels are a challenge - because you can keep writing and it never has to end.

Xanadu project - ever receding nightmare.

Scott: Firefox project. Started in 1997-98, years to get started. Many people wrote them off. They finally took it in pieces and took big bites and stayed with it. Took them much, much longer. Question - why?

Jerry: YAGNI - you aren't going to need it. Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Scott: axe sharpening - taking forever to get your tools, setting up the right environment, right infrastructure - can almost become a job in of themselves. Often becomes a prject in and of themselves. Do not spend all of the time focusing on cleaning - and just do.

Al: search engine - make it simple. Mind also has a hard time handling the scale issue.

Scott: Quantity changes quality - as you scale/grow - does not grow as predictably. The dynamics of systems and communities change the scale.

Jerry: what were the major issues in the Chandler project? Scott: major personality clashes and major "bets" on the project. For example, they chose to use python for the project - not unheard of, but definitely unorthodox. They believed the gain would be from the build versus the dearth of libraries. Today, it is helping much better.

Jerry: AI intelligence with common sense reasoning project - the project hopefully will bootstrap. Scott: the naysayers are right until you prove them wrong.

Jerry: Apollo computers - problems with timing. Scott: software tied to hardware. Software-only project - is infinitely malleable. But, in theory, you can keep changing the platform (hardware) if you want to take care of the platforms. Agile changes.

When you have a lot of users - then you have the concept of legacy and you do not want to break compatibility.

Bill Seitz: every architectural decisions made in the beginning ends up causing the challenge later. Scott: fear is valuable up to a point.

Al: when things are infinitely malleable, people tend to

All about constraint management, rather than getting a particular project done. Used the constraints to make decisions.

Had to leave the call early.

YiTan Tech Conference Call - CES 2007 recap

...joined a few minutes late...

Brian Wieser - CES is the new COMDEX - slice of what was there - how is the ad media changing economy changing - HD is present.

HD is coming up in various offers and devices.

HD Channel feeds - HD offered will be very compressed - consumer interest in consumer interest in HD and cable channels offering HD content. It is not a major change, rather an incremental change - will increase interest, but not a tsunami.

NYT article - Porn industry discovering pros and cons is occurring (you can see who has acne and such).

Pip asks - compression? Brian - Digital networks will eventually begin to fade away.

Second thing - connected media managers/centers/servers - many different solutions.
Digo going to offer a direct to consumer DVR - not relying on cable operators.
Moxie Center very nice - but lots of others.
HP is pushing their offering, lots of Windows Media Server in various forms everywhere.

Jerry - with Vista, will more people consume media in greater forms because of the WMS?
Just because the technology is there, does not mean that everyone is going to use it. Goal from products there was to allow for more media center functionality.

Third thing - internet bypass TVs - TV solutions allow for connection to the Internet (bypassing the cable set-top box). Sony offering branded channels, AOL has an offering, Apple offered iTV. The greatest challenge is the cable-card plugin issue (standards are being used to slow things down, not increase deployment).

Right now, you can get the content, but no return path - e.g. no Video On Demand. When the customer will need the "cable card", it will sound so complicated that the user will just not do it.

Too many obstacles in making true internet bypass content. Unless you have five-9s, customers will nto be happy. Brian's assessment - a long way away (2-3 years) until the issues get resolved.

Pip - what is the problem with cabel cards - how would internet bypass to become common/a reality? Dean Collins - go to CableCard3 to see the work he did with cable networks and cable cards. The cable companies followed the rules, but cable companies were not willing to give the other services. We are now at CableCard1.3 - supposedly going to CableCard2 which would offer two-way, then CableLabs changed the conversation to move from PCMCIA to a chip and then another 2-3 years and intentionally delayed.

Effects of iPhone Announcement at CES
Everyone was talking about it - but wondering if it would live up to the hype. Will they ship out as many as they suggest (10M in 2007). Seems like an impressive device on it's own merit.

Mark - absolutely in line for the iPhone. Game changer in thinking about UI - hardcoding buttons on portable devices - the beginning of the end. What experience is the user after instead of what kind of tool to build.

Pip - "game changing" device that he wants is that it never drops a call and clarity of call. No one has any intention of solving that issue (we are used to it). Will it be "gee whiz" like the Cube or will it be similar to the iPod. Come May/June - will it meet the expectations? Word of Mouth has to be successful. Unlike Vista, iPhone is revolutionary.

Alex - on the marketing, Steve Jobs performance - he blew it by announcing the iPhone before it was ready, and give the competition to figure out what it is and how they can beat it.

Pip - LG is offering an iPhone-like product called PRADA. Not sure why Apple offered the iPhone and have to regenerate the excitement.

Al - with phones, you have to submit the information to the FEC, so it is public then anyway.

Howard - Nokia N800 - follow on to the Nokia 770 - Esme Vos has it - why are we not speaking about it? This phone is open (Linux) and a bad UI for the phone.

Pip - if Ballmer had been showing this product, people would be attacking it much harder. Apple gets a little grace - you can see what it might be, rather than what it is not.

Jerry believe we will be using the tablet to make calls and connect to the bluetooth headset.