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.

YiTan Tech Conference Call - Tempest in the Blogosphere

From Jerry's original email:

In early April, some teasing and badgering online ran out of control. Anonymous commenters became abusive and threatening, and blogger Kathy Sierra responded in a way that lit up cyberspace.

Soon the story ricocheted out of cyberspace, making stops on Salon, BusinessWeek and eventually CNN. The first week ended with Sierra and Chris Locke, publishing a joint statement that helped calm the waters.

Jerry started out with apologizing for what could be perceived as framing the call in a potentially negative way - wanted to be sure that this call was a discussion of feelings and how we personally felt, rather than finger-pointing and recriminations.

Jerry: what were your personal responses in regard to these issues:

• What is the general state of cyberspace discource? Civility in general?
• Discussion on gender in the blogosphere
• "Cute Kitty" moniker - how this became an issue
• Labeling in blogs - what can we do to minimize the negative discourse

Quick and dirty history of the story:
Meankids.com by rageboy, then Bobsyouruncle - all sorts of threats, Kathy was targeted and chose not to go. Got a lot of attention in the world. Blew up into Salon, MSM. A week later, Kathy and Chris showed up on CNN and issued a joint statement (potentially brought together by Tim O'Reilly).

Nancy White and David Reed - discussing the issue in general.

Nancy: was not online when it first unfolded. If we rush to judgment, we will screw up.
First rush, Kathy is a friend - and immediately made her defend Kathy. Her personal reaction was as a friend, a mom, a blogger and immediately had a defensive reaction in terms of the attack. Then she thought - waitaminute - we do not have all the facts. Online, we immediately rush to judgment.

DocSearls (on IRC): It isn't just a rush to judgement. It's about where that rush ends up, in aggregate. You don't so much get a "piling on", but a kind of buzzy hive swarm, where everybody makes the same sounds about the subject. It's a kind of amen corner.

Nancy: People were immediately passing judgment - you should be tougher, men were trying to advise as if they had true experiences like this. The issue migrated from Kathy to gender, then the conversation totally shut down.

DocSearls (on IRC): In the absence of facts, the ratio of opinion to facts reaches the infinite. It becomes better to say nothing than to issue yet another opinion. I reached the point where I realized I *couldn't say anything* to help, unless it was to provide more facts. Black-hole status had been reached.

DocSearls (on the call): was brought in when Kathy mentioned his name. "Blackhole" issue - no more facts were forthcoming and opinions were becoming the dominant factor. We had to take things "offline". Blogs are really the new pulpits. Maybe it is broken.

Jerry: blogging is not a dialog, rather a duologue.

Something about blogging makes opinionating too "newsy" - there is no commons on the Web yet. Like a real "public place" - blogging is not it. (e.g. Tim O'Reilly's call for "code of conduct"was him getting on *his* pulpit). In Europe, they understand the need for public spaces FIRST, then you build your personal and business around that. In the US, we overserve the individual and underserve the collective.

Doc's reaction to the story: shock and frustration. First call received was claiming the Chris *must* have done it - especially since he was "so good at Photoshop". Immediately became a blandishment of opinion. It became a huge time suck - that he resented. It brought the enemies to the forefront and (ed. opinion) friends were stalwarts.

A lot of good work did not get done because of this "thing".

Weren't there good lessons in this to be found? Yes and no - blogging has been something I have enjoyed, but not a large part of my life. Considering stopping blogging - much more work that is being accomplished with real progress (VRM at Berkmann Center, other projects). Doc felt the release of the VT files/Cho materials by NBC on his blog may have been a big mistake.

Hives gather around the "black holes" - becomes a large "suck" of time.

Nancy: interplay between blogs and MSM. Pandora's box is opened - reaction rather than analysis.

Jerry: MSM did not help in the healing, rather helped in the controversy.

SWITCH OVER: Heather - go back to thinking about this personally. Situations of where people have power and do not have power. Despair in should she event get engaged - is this really an opening of conversation. Where is collective engagement?

Pip: Blogging seems to be able listening more than speaking on. Wants to be in the receiver position, not a specific position - to allow one to evolve themselves. In a meeting, better to listen since you know what you know, and what others know. Want to be where people are "open to discussion".

Nancy: spaces online - nurtured online - by deep relationship and trust. Anonymity can happen, but often destroyed. Was extraordinary in the Israeli/Palestinian forum - first three months was good and then it fell apart.

Dennis: Saw a lot of gender and power relationships. When Danah Boyd posted - it was a light on the issue to show what was happening and gave him an appreciation of what happened. Had not thought it was happening STILL.

Posted without fact checking - because he wanted to help. What he could be responsible for and how he would conduct himself. Very much aligned with Nancy's perception of "personal responsibility" versus "code of conduct".

Nicole Lazzaro: lampooning and satire might have gotten misunderstood. By violating social norms, created more emotions. Shocked that it was happening to an individual.

PhilWolff: surprised it spiraled out of control so quickly.

Trudy: came at this very late - learned about what happened. Was not really surprised at what happened and the comments on public spaces. Which is why she does not spend time there. Lots of blogosphere places which do not have the tools or the spirit (interested in the depth of the connection, not the quantity of connections). There was no community manager to take care of the negative posts - on DailyKos, trolls are there to clear the negative comments.

DocSearls (on IRC): "Black holes as entertainment = Blogging as television, as tabloid culture, where celebrity is everything and no minds ever change but merely swim in trivia."

HowTo:
Doc (on call): need something new - blogging is ten years old - tagging works, syndication - very early in the development of whatever we are going to make of the 'net. We need the "geeks" to invent something new. We are trying to aon a 'planet' that has not terriformed. Blogging has turned into People Magazine - 70MM bloggers.

When AOL opened the pipes, the web changed. There are downsides to having everyone getting involved. Need more conversation to happen, instead of lobbing opinions. (Jerry's opinion: very diverse).

Heather: having a person "present" will overcome the need for a 'code of conduct' - how to have your true self. Scaling civility well or intimacy - has anyone seen it happen?

DocSearls (on call): open-source community - very brutal, someone at the top, very challenging - maintains civility through management. "brutally meritocratic", but have developed methods over time. Scaling civility should be possible, intimacy can be more difficult.

Dennis: example would be in the Euro acceptance in Europe.

Heather: when you blog, you are very naked, and being naked on a blog is being very vulnerable. "Being intimate in public" - intention is created. Witnessing in public.

DocSearls (on IRC): I love what Kurt Vonnegut said: "You've got to be kind." That's very hard when you perceive other people as "bad", deserving of rebuke, and at a distance.

Nancy: how can we be in communities in the networked world. The boundaries are in motion - we are trying to refigure them. The North American view is that anonymity and privacy is very different than the rest of the world.

Most communities have four stages - the way to true communities is through chaos. Either by leader (lead us) or MTA (emptiness).

Credits to Jerry on his recap and Peter Kaminski (and others on the IRC) for their quoting abilities.

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 : 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.

Yi-Tan Call - What Makes Stuff Stick?

Joined the call late...

Co-author Dan Heath:

New products offer new models which are often a challenge to introduce to the customer the first time out.

TiVo - had initial problems:
Unexpectedness - never knew that there was a technology to pause live TV - did not align the surprise value with the core values.

Not about supply-side ideas, it should be where the users hearts are. Pausing live TV - not so much. Season Pass - much more in tune with the users hearts. [Ed Note: I think this had to do with the features dominance, not the customer dominance]

Netflix - just recently started touting "no late fees". Initially, the pitch was about how many movies out. Netflix's model excluded the concept of "late fees" by definition. But the rest of the world worried about late fees (think about Blockbuster).

Jerry brought up Prius which had to advertise that you did NOT have to plug in the Prius like other EV cars.

Dan discussed the "Curse of Knowledge" - the more we have, the more difficult at understanding when you do not have the knowledge. This often leads to people explaining concepts that inexperienced people are unable to follow. When you are more aware, you have jargon and other terms to explain difficult or complex concepts and forget how difficult it is to understand "from the beginning".

Dan's son forgot "what is it like being a beginner" when explaining a video game console. Jerry brought up the best mentoring program tends to be the one where kids two years ahead help kids that are two years behind.

Six principles on stickiness - simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, often explained as a story.

Unexpected is to capture attention - standout in a marketplace of ideas. Naked - to surprise people.

Web 1.0 stickiness was about being like gum on the shoe - we will wed ourselves into your life. Web 2.0 is more like loyalty, trustworthiness - we earn your trust and your reason to come back.

Urban legends is false - they are lurid, but they have stickiness. But it has nothing to offer the world. Ethics have to be in the mind of the people communicating. Bad ideas can stick better than good ideas.

Jerry: book he mentioned: food, nutrition and nutrients - graphical elements on boxes versus the "Silence of the Yams". Foods that are good for you do not have the flashy packaging.

"What are the best ideas that don't stick". Stickiness is ethics neutral.

Good examples of stickiness applied to social marketing - "the truth" campaign - the first campaign to put a dent in teen-age smoking. They have co-opted the typical appeal of cigarettes to teens. But they (the truth) shows the teens care about "rebellious act" - the fight is to fight against the tobacco companies.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest - they figured out that movie popcorn had a strange thing about them. The average bags has 37 grams of saturated fat - TWO DAYS of a normal persons intake of saturated fat.

They could have attacked the coconut oil, the movie theaters, etc - instead, they had a press conference showing that the saturated fat in a bag of popcorn was equal to a bacon and eggs breakfast, a Big Mac meal lunch and a steak and all the trimmings dinner - TOGETHER. How to fight without money - this was the idea with POWER. A well structured idea.

Pip: loves the examples in the book - the book reinforced that numbers are pretty useless.

Everyone has the instinct to use data in presentations. The conclusion about numbers are that they are INPUT not output. Use the numbers to get to the conclusion and then once you make the conclusion, talk about the conclusion - not just the numbers.

After WWII, the house parties increasing awareness of nuclear proliferation. Would have everyone close their eyes and tell them the next soudn they would hear was the equivalent of the atomic power dropped on Nagasaki and then would drop a BB into an aluminum pail. Next, the sounds of the atomic power on a nuclear submarine (and drop 5-6 BBs). Finally, to demonstrate the atomic power found in the nuclear arsenals of both the US and the USSR (and then would drop 5000 BBs).

While the numbers did not matter, the sounds difference was a vector of the two data points versus the actual numbers.

Ben from Ben and Jerry's - Cookies showing the size of the nuclear arsenal.

Jerry: Eddy Bernays - how he was able to make bacon a breakfast staple, even when it was the belly fat of a pig.

Pip: Al Gore - he took home the Oscar, is he using the techniques? Dan: Yes - most powerful sequence - about a third of the way in the movie. When he shows the time lapsed photos of the fact that global warming is here and now.

Small and steady warming - the net effect of the graphs - showing the effect of GW happening slowly and very far down the line. Al Gore says "now" - shows the Glacier Mountain National Park - showing the loss of the visual proof in your face.

Jerry: the carbon emission graph (with the lift) shows the example of a sticky use of a graph.

Pip: talking about rising tides - some say 8-20 ft, others say 1-2 ft.

Gore has a very large carbon footprint - personal jets, others.

Dan tells of a donation test with two versions of the request - 1) a letter telling about the large scale problems in Africa (100s of thousands) versus 2) a letter one girl who needed help in Rokia - twice as much money for the letter with the little girl.

Later, the tried two versions of the girl letter. One group was given SAT type questions (standardized tests), other group was primed emotionally (what words come to mind as a baby).

Results: almost double the amount with the "emotional priming" versus "analytical priming".

Jerry's favorite quote: Analytical thinking diminishes our charitable state of mind.
Seems to be a mutual exclusiveness - between an emotional state of mind and the analytical state of mind.

Jerry: we need to integrate the analytical and the emotional. "Crystallizing Public Opinion" by Eddy Bernays.

Think about the Reagan speech on the welfare mother who drives a Cadillac - the dark side of not respecting ethics - you can attach an emotional appeal on something that is not ethical.

Stickiness on the Iraq War - take a look at the piece. Give your thoughts.

Dan talked about the traits into things that share.

Yi-Tan Tech Conference Call: Social Search

How we are helping one another to find content on the 'net. How are helping others finding the "good stuff'? google is loading the database with content and scholarly content.

Jerry includes in thoughts: outfoxed.com now called lejit.com (social searching), digg.com, diggswarm.com, me.dium (Firefox plugin), chacha.com (conventional search and/or assisted by someone), del.icio.us (echoditto.com shares all things they are looking at), can hide important information in plain site using a specific string in del.icio.us - allows for people to find the content on your specific tag. google Reader Sharing - reblogging content. Imaging 1600 feeds into the reader - then needs someone to filter. google Reader allows for share and has a shareable URL "exhaust feed" of the content in a rapid process.

Peter/Trudy: we do not use social search. Know about it - not able to make it work in a focused fashion. At present, do not know how. Use trusted email lists, but have not found how social search works for the things needed.

Things that look like social search: emails forwarded to you by friends - this is social search.
Al Chang's google summary - Al looks at a lot of stuff.

Rocky - discovered google Reader Share - for the teams. No mechanism to consume reader feeds. Have to go to yet another URL to consume it for my team. Would like a highlighter of important info.

Jerry - Firefox plugins could be modified to highlight the feeds.

Jim Benson - PageFlake - an aggregator of content and feeds - provides a richer view of social news. Sets up a widget to read the feed with specific tags

Beth - community tagging project - uses nptech and writes a summary and created a metafeed into categories. How do you create community filtering occur? Now using Pligg - kid of a digg platform.

Jerry: What are the after effects of using this? Beth - cross-blog conversations started. Other efforts - who's tagging, starting a folksonomy.

Jerry: run to dabbleDB which shows you how to pull data out of digg and del.icio.us and analyze it.

Pip - what works, what doesn't work - based on reputation of the people within the network - informalness. Hiring people that are conscientious - right brain filter. Jerry: these people are sort of anal, obsessive/compusive - but these skills are important to filter feeds and then need to connect to the meet, not the torrent.

Rocky - Current workflow is STILL based on trust. We build protected data streams from people we know and trust. To move to something that scales, requires we move to people we trust but do not know. Can not optimize a standard.

Jerry: collection of work over time - if we start to see content that is relevant and appropriate - and do it well over a long period of time, we develop trust over time. Bringing up the issues of weak-ties over strong-ties. Eric Biddle has a news feed that he has published a news feed over the course of the last eight years, and built up a weak ties.

Wikipedia founder creating Citizen Media through wikia, Campaign Wikia and Wikiseek - a community google play.

Breaks the whole Web 2.0 model? Pip - not that I like the content, rather that I feel that there is a level of transparency. Why is there something wrong with building a closed system? Web 2.0 is not about everything being open - which is limiting freedoms as well.

Boundary of open versus closed. Very strange for corporates at this time. When you start locking down portions of the content (like sections of Wikipedia), you can potentially impact the social norm of the commons. Whenever the Dean campaign sent out the coordinators to locations, energy dies out because of the paid staff. Nurturing the commons is a major issue.

Jerry: how explicit do we make the trust metrics - like reputation systems. These systems seem to ruin social norms rather than help them.

Mark - reputonics: filtering out who you know versus what you know. AggregateKnowledge - great to see the what. a) who is saying it and b) what they are saying.

Tags: social search, relationships, trusted bonds, google reader sharing

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.

Yi-Tan Tech Conference Call - Predictions for 2007

From Jerry's request for predictions:

Dean Landsman: Microsoft will make serious moves on online advertising and attempt a hostile takeover of Yahoo! - might save Microsoft's own blunders.

Pip: Microsoft is on the crest - ready to become bolder - and become more active. Microsoft's R&D budget is too high compared to their peers ($8B in 2006) - will make a change. Wii becoming a very powerful voice. Alternative energy/glovbal warming will become higher and higher. Some new idea will come into the framework will translate into a change. Action may occur. Stage 2 of energy independence, climate change - will be at the top of the agenda by the end of the year. Green will become cool - and will be a way for people to become rich (Jerry: "green is the new black") - audience has expanded.

Nicole Lazzaro: Wii stats - very impressive - continued success - outselling the PS3 with the new experience. Gets back to what is most exciting about gaming - forcing designers to innovate and create new innovation elsewhere. Low end of the market.

Nancy White: SecondLife - what will people be doing with online environments - how will people make it easier for users to use SL environments. Second wave adoption is going to get serious attention - and will help develop revenues and adoption opportunities.

Jerry: no community is takling up SL like college students took up FaceBook.

Allen Kelly: Gartner hype-cycle - initial hype, disillusionment, then mainstream adoption - 2007 will be a disillusionment and then 2008 will become the real growth. SL (hopefully) will offer a chance to allow for creative and innovative opportunities after the disillusionment trough.

Pip: Web browser allows for simple navigation - ISPs got you on. Need similar slide for SL. Initial adoption - and then something that is radically compelling. Needs it to become more navigatible and create compelling experiences.

Jerry: in Web 1.0 - early browsers - you could view code and then reuse code. Easy dissemination. In SL, not easy - growth constraint - IP has slowed it down.

Nathan: energy issues- lend even more fire into energy-efficient computing. No info on google aiming for energy efficiency. AMD is maintaining its advantage over Intel in terms of energy efficiency. Virtualization will be the place to be.

Pip to Nathan: will there be fewer and fewer servers in the world? Nathan: some of the high volume has to start experiencing slower growth with the virtualization expansion. In addition, power and real-estate issues.

Howard: Dan Miller pointed out that in Y2K in '99 has depreciated in the past seven years - look to replace their equipment and look to virtualization and centralization. Amazon cloud-in-the-sky solutions. Social media is not dead - despite what Steve Rubel says.

Bo: FindMe/FollowMe will exist - IM, SMS, mobile phone lines - and control access views to contact you. Will be able to happen in '07 - smart phones, FON - will happen for real.

Jerry: will be have an aggregation of free wifi - muni? What effect will that have on the carrier model? Will it syphon off that solution.

Esme: Yes, you can roam NOW - police in several cities are already running around using their laptops, high speed chases - anmd getting high-speed wifi. Number of cities that have a network up and running or RFPs are over 300. Grassroots level wifi - can not roam. One companies network - wireless local LAN - you can roam. 802.11N will win over WiMAX - need to win over the laptops, need to get over the upgrade cycle. Delay in the replacement of the devices. N good replacement of current tech.

Jerry: social filtering (using social information to find information)

Heather: what is next - social filtering will proliferate - will be a huge influx of human curating - displaying visually - sort of like Jerry's Brain. Will always be challenging to find what you want. Yahoo! did it in the beginning - and now others are doing it better. Tools that will go into it - but human beings will have to be part of the equation.

Jerry: right-brain: "A Whole New Mind"

Jay: Drop Web 2.0, 3.0 and call it WebN - not webX (already copyrighted)

Nick: Identity in '07 - productive and accelerated work in converging technologies in terms of interoperation. When benefits of single signon becomes more than password/authentication - and then eyeballs/identities are allocated - this will become the major acceleration. Major places to look: iiw2006 - workshops, Berkman Center w/ Doc Searles, technometria, Sxipper - single signon browser. Identity/SS - middle of the spam issues - more important to validate who sends what to make identity very important - will, in a lasting way, be important. Could help and really hurt as well - tracking the policy side. Watching how people are able to manage their identity and other aspects.

Jerry: 2007 appears to be spam. Image spam - much larger in file size - applicaion acceleration. Now it is becoming more important to handle.

Yi-Tan Tech Conference call : Wii and nVidia

The Yi-Tan Tech Community Conference Call is put on by Jerry Michalski and Pip Colburn and talks about various subjects on technology. These are my notes from this week's call on the Nintendo Wii and the new nVidia GPU card.

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Nicole Lazzaro - about the Wii - next gen console - control is better. Instead of graphics, they focused on a new input device. New types of gaming possible. Small remote controller - candy-bar remote controller. Accelerometer allows for tennis racket, fly a helicopter, swing a sword.

Breaking away from the rat-race of polygons and ray tracing, avoiding the complex world spaces - Wii is hoping to be a disruptive source - reframe what it means to be a quality game. Not as much reality, more as creating an interactive experience. By doing new stuff with the controller, had a Minority Report experience - drumming on virtual drums.

Controller does not have force feedback - but you can use your body to impact the gaming experience. Very different interaction.

Think about how "Dance, Dance Revolution" changed the interaction with the game. Graphics only goes so far. The Wii platform is ready to go to the next level of interaction. Wii controllers that is going to come out will be wireless (cordless).

Other uses outside of gaming - ten years from now? Games are always at the forefront (headups display, etcera). Will be a lot more gesturally sensitive ways of interacting with games.

Carl from nVidia - with the new offering, what makes this card a landmark? Integrating these things for HDTV/DVD/HiDef is becoming expected and needed. Much more realistic feel - but question is how much bandwidth is this going to take. GPUs are moving up to the processing power of the CPUs. Begins to migrate you away from the PC.

Will it impact the transfer to gaming platforms/stations? This offering is a step up - much better than what has happened in the past year. Will take an adoption curve - expensive, manufacturing, etcera. The bang for the capital equipment buck is not as good.

Accelerometer technology has been there for a while - and now people are using it because the components are to the level necessary.

Less rendered images allows us to place ourselves into the world versus the realistic method. Radio is a much clearer "picture" than television since it is the imagination that makes things happen.

AMD - CPU+GPU chip - with AMD having the memory controller on the processor, all the memory traffic gets caught going through the CPU. By integrating onto a single chip, AMD is able to avoid the bottleneck of hyper-transport. But will they have a higher complexity, which results in a lower yield? Moores Law should make this happen anyway.

Wii may be just an add-on - onto the Sony Playstation and then buy the Wii.

Playstation priced too high? Nicole suggests that maybe it is now into the entertainment budget and a game will be equivalent to the price of tickets.

New experiences are available now - take advantage of these new technologies...