I’ve decided to revive this blog after two years absence.  Many things have changed in that brief time, not the least of which a new professional title (winemaker).  Stay tuned for thoughts about being a craftsman in the attention economy world.  Tune in and see what happens next (Urban Legend Cellars opening soon).
We’ll be barrel sampling our 2008 Barbera at UWX next month UWX – Urban Wine Experience come by and say hello!

Theres an increasing buzz (rabble rousing?) calling for facebook and others to tear down the walls (Wired, Scott Kveton, Mashable, etc). Netvibes has clearly fired a shot across facebook’s bow -Will facebook close access?  That will depend on which way the traffic goes.  Unfortunately  there isn’t a way for Netvibes to  pay facebook for the attention they gain.

Until the “attention economy” is enabled borrowing content isn’t viable. Attempting to retain an individual’s attention (”sticky” URL) by importing content from other sites without a fair exchange isn’t going to work.

Assume Netvibes is wildly successful; no one goes to the creators site; the creators go broke, that doesn’t work. This is the RSS feed argument again, but amplified since there don’t seem to qualms about taking content off one site and presenting on another (Yes it is with the user’s permission but is it within facebooks very liberal 3rd party agreement?)

I know the argument – facebook is making money off the members content; yes, but they created and maintain the exchange. Could they share revenue? Yes. Would enough people move somewhere else if they got a piece of it? Not if the site didn’t provide other services (like mining user information to find connections, tacking friends, etc.).

For better or worse advertising (attention) revenue is what enables the web (in general). Support content creators visit their sites! the alternative is embedded advertising (biased content).

Netvibes, let’s talk about how to pay content creators.

Steve Job’s is apparently sensitive to the “closed shop” comments surrounding iTunes.  Bambi Francisco takes up the Apple’s cause on her blog: “Apple’s Jobs makes a good point”.

Update:  Tim Adnerson has very well written counterpoint to Mr. Jobs calling for DRM free music: How about licensing FairPlay or supporting other DRM standards.

Let’s face it this isn’t about music, that battle is mostly over and the entertainment industry lost. They didn’t believe Moore’s law applied.
This is really about video/movies, which are far more expensive to produce and promote. Ultimately they’ll loose again because they still can’t understand how fast technology improves.

Daniel and I spent several months looking at the issues surrounding content distribution over the net and concluded that while the technology is already here (Wal-Mart Intros Movie Downloads) the incentive for the industry to change isn’t. The economic paranoia, represented by DRM will continue to make the experience less than satisfactory. I don’t want the Small screen experience I want to use my home theatre!

A New economic model needs to be demonstrated (in a big way) before they’ll change. Something equivalent releasing “Napoleon Dynamite” on the net and supporting it with targeted advertising. Given the conservatism in the industry there’ll need to be multiple successful releases of both music and video before things will begin to change.

This will truly be the attention economy! Embed personalized marketing download tags into an unencrypted MPEG2/4 stream. When one viewer redistributes the video for you, you get a new customer for free. Come see us we’ll help you make it happen.

Google may have been a slow starter in the Social Networking field but their certainly making up ground. The MySpace agreement “Myspace deal gives Google access to “oblivious teenager” demographic” along with “Google and Viacom’s MTV Networks to Test
New Online Video Distribution Model” seem like an obvious coupling.
Obtain content to embed advertizing into add a large target audience…. equals revenue growth. And oh by the way click fraud isn’t really a problem since you can’t accelerate the video feed.

I’m listening to Robert Scoble talk at LIFT06. In listening to him talk about how Microsoft is listening to customers thoughts throughout the blogosphere (I presume they’re also listening to comments which would be good), I wonder if this will eventually lead to a civilizing of the blogosphere. If individuals are really being heard then maybe they’ll “act” /write like it. I hope that this can help to reduce “flaming” defaming (I know given that I’ve lived with the net for 27 years you’d think I’d remember that flame wars have been around as long as email) but maybe just maybe this time we can make the net more intimate and personal not a shield to hide behind.

An insightful counterpoint to my hope is a Wired news report out today on understanding the tone of email.

I tend to think that email is probably less well prepared than blog entries or comments, hopefully given that blogs are inherently public people will think more abut them.

It’s worth watching Robert’s talk. Microsoft is doing themselves a world of good with Robert, he’s a credit to the company, hopefully he can help change their attitude (more open) and thereby improve their image.

Michael Arrington has Google’s latest salvo in the open API wars:

Google Taunts Skype, Releases GTalk API

Google has just released a set of components called Libjingle that allow third party applications to interact with Google Talk. The components, which include some source code, are being released under a very liberal license allowing for free incorporation into commercial and non-commercial software.

It’s about time that Google started opening their API to commercial applications. This should be avery interesting time for all.  As other’s have noted this gets even more interesting with the integration of AOL IM and Gtalk – I presume this will mean that any Jabber client with Libjingle integration can talk to any AOL IM client?

Newsweek just published an article confirming my worst fears:

“BLOCKED OUT. Doug Herring, 48, got a glimpse of that specter last November. Traveling on business in Tennessee, the General Electric (GE) sales manager phoned his wife at their Elberta (Ala.) home. Herring had just signed up with Web-phone provider Vonage Holdings and was pleased with the service. But this time, he couldn’t get through. He switched Web-phone providers, but still couldn’t make calls.

Frustrated, Herring contacted Madison River Communications, the rural phone company that provides his digital subscriber line (DSL) connection. The company said it was blocking calls from Internet phone companies. Outraged, Herring and Vonage complained to federal regulators.

“For me to get the Internet where I live, [Madison River] is the only provider,” Herring fumes. In March the Federal Communications Commission fined the company $15,000, and the carrier agreed it would no longer block Internet-calling services.�?

The good news is the FCC fined a small carrier; The bad news is that the carrier didn’t break any laws and further, the large carriers are heading in the same direction, as Mr. Whitacre notes in this quote:

“Yet in a Nov. 7 interview with BusinessWeek Online, AT&T CEO Edward Whitacre Jr. declared: “What [Google, Vonage, and others] would like to do is to use my pipes free. But I ain’t going to let them do that.” Whitacre and AT&T argue that they need flexibility to exact a toll from Web services that hog bandwidth.�?

Read the entire article here: At Stake: The Net as We Know It

Mr Whitacre forgets that users pay for the use of his “pipes�? and he’s already making misleading promises about how much bandwidth is being delivered. This is a public utility once again failing to abide by their franchise and the governing regulatory body aiding and abetting their usurious behavior. Why should the access over the pipe be paid for twice? Is it because Google is smarter about making money than they are? Or perhaps that Vonage is yet another nail in the cash cow (the phone system has been fully depreciated for many decades).

What about the other half of this robbery?

The FCC ruled last summer that broadband providers we not obligated to provide equal access to competitive services. They went further and made sure the coverage was so broad that a network provider could not only prevent an other network provider from demanding access to the network transport layer but also to any “competitive services�?.

The excerpt below, from the executive summary, it is clear that the FCC intends to allow network “pipe�? providers abuse their privileged monoloply:

From the FCC ruling Appropriate Framework for BroadbandAccess to the Internet over Wireline Facilities (ruling 05-150)

“In accordance with our responsibilities under the Act, and in light of the competitive and technical characteristics of the broadband Internet access market today, we take the following actions to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for facilities-based providers of wireline broadband Internet access service:

• Consistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion in NCTA v. Brand X, we determine that facilities-based wireline broadband Internet access service is an information service….�?

The FCC is either unbelievably uninformed about the industry they regulate or has decided that they can wantonly disregard the public trust they have sworn to uphold.

“Finally, the actions we take in this Order allow facilities-based wireline broadband Internet access service providers to respond to changing marketplace demands effectively and efficiently, spurring them to invest in and deploy innovative broadband capabilities that can benefit all Americans, consistent with the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (the Communications Act or Act).�?

Innovation by an RBOC is a oxymoron. The only thing that held them back is the thought that if they drag their feet they can gain an unfair regulatory advantage rather than spend money. The equipment pays for itself inside of 6 months or they don’t deploy it. In this case increasing bandwidth costs them and the cable providers (MSO) money, doesn’t provide additional revenue.

Let think about this for a moment, why innovate when you can’t really expand your footprint or extract much more money from a household? Oh but you say what about advanced services like “IP video�?, look at the cable industries profitability and then ask the question again.

Increasing raw bandwidth just opens them up to agile competitors using their own pipes against them unless they can block them, which is what this ruling did. It grants the right for the network provider (wireline or cable) to block, censor, or degrade any “service�? they deem competitive. They been doing the latter regularly anyway now it’s clearly legal.

I’m surprised that there wasn’t more outrage at the time the ruling was made but I guess no one really thought they meant it, even given the long history of wireline and MSO operators gaming public regulation for obscene gain.

Now is one of the rare times when you should be emailing/calling/writing your congressional representatives, the white house, department of commerce, and the FCC. You can and will have censorship on the on the Internet without recourse.

This is malicious corporate censorship aided by malicious or incompetent federal bureaucrats. Time to have them called to to answer.

Network providers have been given the tools to kill innovation in the Internet and set the United States further behind in web technology. This will end up killing small innovate companies long before it hurts Googlezon.

Network providers need to provide open access to whatever their customers want to consume. If they provider wants to charge per bit, fine just make sure the pricing policy is stated clearly. Customers should have a clear indication of what the real capacity restrictions are in the network (i.e. What is the over subscription factor ). throttling back customers to their fair share is an acceptable practice, unfairly throttling particular applications is not (this is a routine practice in many networks).

The physical plants, with the possible exception of fiber to the home have been subsidized, via a publicly granted monopoly, including most cable TV plants. In almost all cases the gain from this franchise was realized long ago, they should be now employed to reduce the consumers cost of service. Perhaps we should have credits allocated to the consumer if, as the carriers assert they, can not technically be opened to competitors?

Services across the network need to remain “technology and competitively neutral�?, network providers have an unfair advantage in that they alone can see what goes across the network.

It is time to make it illegal for network providers to manage bandwidth only any basis other than capacity per customer.

Please write your congressional representatives asking them to review FCC rule 05-150.

I’ve recently started reading David Hornick’s Excellent Venture Blog. He recently discussed Tim Westergren’s trials in creating Pandora a music “genome” site.  Having read the story  I’m even more impressed with the site.  There’s obvoisuly a lot of hard work behind the musical ontology.  I’m experimenting with it even now, trying to understand how the search alogrithm is working.  If Nothing else I can see this is going to be personally expensive.  I’m not sure how much of it will go to Amazon or Apple yet (the buy now choices) but I know this is going to lead me to buy more music than I have in years.

Tim and team well done!

There has been lots of speculation on what’s next with search or what is “web 3.0″… this is it.

Daniel and I met with our friend/ angel (a Si Valley VC that shall remain unnamed for now) a week ago Tuesday. We’ve just been trough a tough couple of weeks trying to define exactly what is was that we had here. We’ve got a good direction, some unique and valuable technology ideas and rough understanding of how to monetize it but we hadn’t even come close pulling it all together. We left wit ha much better idea of how to put the pitch together. Ouch – not so much that we got beaten up but that I did such a poor job of presenting. We’re getting closer to having “business�? but there are still lots of pieces not tied together.

Our friend is being unbelievably patient with us (but very direct with feedback), what is doubly embarrassing is that Daniel and I are both good at working on these pitches; being able to stand back and see the big picture… it’s a lot harder when your doing your own from ground zero.

Marilee and I spent last Saturday afternoon at the local Experienced Rider Course (ERC). It was good and bad… Practicing rapid stops and tight low speed maneuvers = Good! Having to go backwards to 4 fingers on the brake Bad… Very Bad! The ST4s’ Bremos are marvelous sensitive beasts, hard braking with 1 finger can cause over braking, trying to do a quick stop (versus a panic stop) with 4 fingers on zero practice time is very scary… at least I now know what losing the front end feels like. Fortunately I didn’t dump the bike. Exactly ½ the class dropped their bike at some point though the day. I think everyone learned something valuable and got their $75 worth but it could have been much better.

A couple of observations:

• The basic course should be required period. The one rider that had fairly serious get off had never taken a MSF course and made a very basic error.
• ERC courses don’t get enough attention form the MSF or the instructors – the basic course dominates ever since CA started pushing new riders that direction (a very good thing)
• Riders should be encouraged to take the ERC about 1 year after the basic course and then a follow up in year 2/3.

The US at least needs something more advanced than the ERC. Lane position in moderate speed corners, trail braking into the the corner and much more line planning in linked curves need to be taught along with advanced traffic avoidance skills. There needs to be something in between the ERC and track school.