It's Fixed in the Next Release - Technology

WYSIKSWYGBNQ

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford (developer blog)) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 10:25:10 -0600

I Twittered this but it deserves more permanence. I've been using it for years and unfortunately it still summarizes my frustration with browser based Javascript "WYSIWYG" text editors:

WYSIKSWYGBNQ = What You See Is Kinda Sorta What You Get But Not Quite.

Audience: The Social Media Killer

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:42:50 -0600

I've been engaged with social media since forever. Always found it fascinating, even exciting. I really like Twitter. Now Quora seems interesting, but in a semi-social-media sort of way. There's a bit of a shift happening. A lot of "early adopters" have been doing the Quora thing for a while and now it's on the upswing of that familiar knee function of exponential growth.

Meanwhile, Twitter seems a little less vibrant. Is it because all the cool kids are playing with Quora? Partially. After all anyone with a real job only has so much time to dicker with this stuff, unless you're a rare beast: a Professional Social Media Guru that's a real job. So maybe Twitter is a little less shimmering with excitement because really interesting people are spending less time on it.

But that isn't all. That only explains part of it.

I think the dampening of Twitter is something that's been repeated many times with other trends – most notably blogging – and the common factor is audience. I think audience kills.

Along with a few million people, I signed on to Twitter about two years ago (call me a just-past-the-bleeding-edge adopter). What was compelling about it was the community. Chances you were going to find someone interesting, or even be followed by someone interesting were pretty high. That's exciting.

Then it became a mass phenomenon. People stopped talking to their community of followers and stated talking to their Audience. Many people stripped character from their tweets, so they didn't run a risk of offending their Audience. Characterless marketing opportunity opportunists joined in droves. Now I get endless series of follows who have triggered off some word I've used. Say the dreaded "Search Engine Optimization", expect to get followed by 35 so-called experts, half of whom promote the same methods I labelled as absolute garbage in the tweet that triggered the follow! No dialogue, no engagement, not even an argument. Just follow on keyword. These aren't people, they're applications. It's not a conversation, it's not anything.

The result is low grade ore. Generic, bland grey goo. Repetitions of repetitions of the mildly informative, rehashed. It's not spam, it's not interesting. It's a fire hose of information with few gems. The vibrancy is increasingly hard to find.

This decay is all down to Audience. Many blogs were great – when almost nobody read them. Now they write to their Audience, mostly with corresponding non-offensive blandness. Twitter offers diminishing returns, thanks to Audience. Facebook continues to survive, but only if you "friend" people you stand a chance of recognizing in a police lineup, which severely limits scope. LinkedIn has gone from a way to connect to people with specific skills or knowledge to ways to connect to people with a mail address. Now there's value.

I see MetaFilter is charging a nominal amount ($5.00) to create an account, mostly to keep the spam out. Maybe this is the kernel of a good idea. Maybe the cost of joining a community should increase as the membership grows. Maybe someone will develop an automated value ranking system that makes connecting to a site a low cost proposition for high value individuals, and vice versa. I'd sign up for that. Screw the audience.

Spam via Zoominfo, Another in the Don't Trust Series

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 06:55:24 -0600

Update: Part of the problem is the "allow people to contact me through this address" flag, which was set on. Hard to believe I'd let that happen, but I'll assume that part was my failure, although the spam in question came in directly, not through Zoominfo's servers. It's probable that there was still a loss of data integrity at Zoominfo.

One of the great things about maintaining your own domain is the ability to put up a good fight when it comes to spam. It's a real battle. This domain has been registered since the late 90's, when an open Internet meant that just about anybody could harvest contact information from domain registration databases.

The result is that my main personal mail address has been inundated with spam for nearly 15 years. It's not just inbound. This domain has been used as a forged mail source more than once. In one incarnation, the home page here maintained a debunking of various bullshit claims that appeared to have come from me, so at the very least those with the wherewithal to visit the site would not get scammed. Like it or not, I'm on the vanguard of the spam fight.

For the past decade or so I've created a unique forwarding address for every thing I sign up for. Over the years it's gone from a simple "name of service at ambit online dot com" to incorporate a random string, to eliminate the "anyone could have guessed that" defence.

This has led to some interesting results. From exposing criminal theft of data at two companies, to partner misbehaviour at Salesforce (see my Don't Trust Salesforce.com post).

This morning I was met with two pieces of spam from my tracking address for ZoomInfo.com, both personally addressed using my name. One was from audio@execwebtraining.com, one from audio@webcareertraining.net. Clearly both are from the same source, and the body of the message includes the same contact information: Executive Education, P.O. Box 31, Devault, PA 19432, 1-888-669-6067. My opinion: anyone who does business with a spammer using a generic name and running out of a post office box is a complete fool.

This spam not only contained my name, but it was addressed to an address that contained "zoominfo" plus six random alphanumeric characters. Obviously this is came directly from Zoominfo's databases. The odds of a guess on the random string alone are over one in two billion.

When this sort of thing happens, I normally contact the source and try to find out what the issue is. It's either theft of data or unethical behaviour from a partner. Both are serious, and possibly criminal, bad behaviour. So I went to the zoominfo.com site, started down the "support" path. Zoominfo is structured to deflect support away from anything that requires them to expend staff time. That's an early indicator of a poor customer service philosophy. Honestly I just don't have the patience to eventually get to some form buried five levels deep, only to get an auto-response suggesting I consult the crap I just waded through. It's just easier to go public.

So here's the simple bottom line: Either Zoominfo has been hacked and has a big problem, or they have lousy partner selection criteria, which is possibly a bigger problem. Either way, they need to come clean in a public way, and fast. Their credibility with me has just taken a huge hit. Not that that makes for much of a change, really.

Meanwhile, I'm off to update a tracking address. If the spam follows the address, I'll know it's a partner problem. Unless Zoominfo is completely asleep at the switch, there are likely to be updates to this coming soon.

Silicon Valley – Adjusting to the Internet's Long Tail?

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 12:50:50 -0500

Over the past year or so there's been an unusual amount of public navel gazing on the investor side of Silicon Valley (and by proxy most of the North American venture capital space). Venture capital companies have an image of being slow, demanding, and cumbersome; solely focused on big wins with huge valuations. So called “super” angels have emerged to fill a void in the VC deal space, and new hybrid models like that of YCombinator have emerged.

As Max Levchin observes, angels have an interest in lower valued exits. He concludes that the positioning of super angels as VC alternatives has resulted in a “lack of visible significant innovation”. While Levchin's observations are correct, I'm not certain that it's the angel's fault.

Instead, I think we're reaching the “long tail” of the Internet, and we need to look for innovation elsewhere. The big hits in the Internet space have all had to do with providing analogues of existing human behaviours, and the number of untapped behaviours is diminishing. A preponderance of incremental innovations – with corresponding low exits – is only to be expected.

We have been so focused on Internet related innovation for the past decade and a half (and software for the decade previous) that for a lot of investors seem to have forgotten that there are alternatives.

It's not that there's a shortage of demand for innovation. There are many areas that need great minds and risk capital. Unfortunately those aren't the opportunities that can be exploited by a bright kid with six months programming experience. They're big, capital intensive, long term projects that need teams of highly skilled people to address them. Some of these problems are critically important. They need to be solved if we're going to preserve our current lifestyle, if not ensure our survival.

If the investment community wants to innovate, it's going to have to stop looking for the ultimate solution to determining how to rank “influence” on Twitter, and instead look for better transportation solutions, better solar power generation, methods to scrub carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, local power generation and distribution, and solutions for other truly important problems.

While North America becomes increasingly concerned about it's own relatively trivial problems like how to make an even cooler handheld device, our ability to innovate – our very concept of innovation – is collapsing in on itself like a dying star. Meanwhile, Asia is fast becoming the true leader in innovation and unless we pull out of this “make it big on the Internet” vortex, it won't be long before we're buying critical technology from abroad.

Let's not blame the angel investors. Levchin says “we should aim higher.” He's right. The question is whether or not we know which way is up.

On Development Teams

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford (developer blog)) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:52:00 -0500

Earlier today Amy Stephen and I had an interesting discussion on development teams, I thought it worth organizing and preserving. Because it's a bit of a threaded conversation it takes a little work to follow the flow, but there's no easy way to sort it out.

One of the most interesting things here is that even though I tend to take a bit of a hard-ass "no prisoners" approach to the problem, and Amy is fairly close to my polar opposite, we actually look at the fundamental problem in nearly the same way.

AmyStephen	Wondering about the market potential of the promise of a 1 day workshop that can turn a dysfunctional group into a high performance team. It's puzzling to watch a dysfunctional group where members keep barriers to entry high and engage in intense, private battles within.
FxNxRl	Lets see... the seminar starts with a real-time attitude and teamwork survey, then lists who should be retained and who fired.
AmyStephen	That might do it – if management would so empower. Typically, you'll find spineless leadership behind dysfunction.
FxNxRl	Indeed. I have done consulting assignments where I had to tell the person who hired me that they were the main problem. Awkward.
AmyStephen	So, how would you sort out the understandably frustrated's from those who might be, shall we say, squelching innovation?
FxNxRl	Most of the time it's pretty easy to tell one from the other by simply talking to them face to face.
AmyStephen	I used to think that I could tell quickly but now I am doubting my early instincts. It's a bit unsettling, in fact. I can't tell.
FxNxRl	What's difficult is to unmask the passive-aggressive ones. Usually high-value team members who kill things by "contributing".
FxNxRl	It is impossible to tell when there's distance involved, and it can be difficult in person too.
FxNxRl	I once managed a team where I had to use source code control metrics to track project progress. Every time a project was really doing well, the lead developer would step in to "help" and the project would nearly stop. There was no way to fire him...
AmyStephen	Yes, it's tricky when the one causing the problem has a great deal of authority. You have to control the process to figure it out.
AmyStephen	Source code control can be a great tool for lots of challenges simply because people who are traumatized can see justice/hope
AmyStephen	That is, provided they can commit to it, of course. Otherwise, it's just another situation where they have to face this barrier.
FxNxRl	Yup, and it's hard data in an environment where everyone has some emotional involvement no matter how hard they try not to.
FxNxRl	Development without revision control is art, not engineering.
FxNxRl	The very first thing is to put proven development methodologies in place. If there's strong resistance, fire the dissidents.
AmyStephen	lol - I definitely do not agree, but I understand. Many times, your skeptics are simply people who think for themselves.
AmyStephen	In fact, you can bag anyone who's onboard with change too quickly. Everyone should resist process changes if they are moving forward.
FxNxRl	I realized, at about age 45, that I had become the "asshole manager" I loathed at 25. Team results trump individual brilliance.
AmyStephen	In general, I think it's a bad idea for mgmt to plunk a set of "productivity tools" on an engineer's desk. Best to let them pick.
FxNxRl	Well yeah, you can't say "effective Monday everyone is using SVN and methodology X". The method of change is critical.
AmyStephen	I'm a HUGE believer in team. I think, though, the strongest teams are built from a complementary collection of individual brilliance.
FxNxRl	But the guys who say "never did it that way, ain't gonna start now" and then dig in? Well they can do it "their way" elsewhere.
FxNxRl	So am I... and I have seen effective teams operate in mayhem. It's all about getting complimentary characters.
AmyStephen	That's why it's important to involve them. Good engineers know what productivity aids are needed and welcome it. They resist "silly"
FxNxRl	I have seen highly effective teams with vastly different cultures. You could NEVER take a person from one of those teams and put them in the other. It's all about getting people who work well together.
AmyStephen	Absolutely! I've worked on a team like that 2 times in my life. When you have tasted it, you know what it is & why it's worth having
FxNxRl	I've also become friends with people who I've let go as a "parachute in manager/jerk". They found teams where they fit & r happy
AmyStephen	Yes - there's a chemistry that cannot be ignored. In MBTI, it's the middle 2 indicators that can sometimes predict compatibility
AmyStephen	Yes. That's best. A self-directed work team w clear boundaries and focus and empowerment. It's how "grown-ups" should be treated.
FxNxRl	Dated though it may be I'm a huge MBO fan. Here's what we need to do, tell me what you need to do it, then get it done.
FxNxRl	as long as it's legal and ethical I don't care how it gets done, just that I can measure progress and that there is progress.
AmyStephen	I don't think common sense is ever dated. Keeping a focus on "what this is really about" is always good.

Amazing Code Repository Visualization (Joomla)

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford (developer blog)) — Sat, 30 May 2009 08:55:34 -0500

This is amazing stuff. The description from the YouTube page says it best: "This Code Swarm provides an animated visual representation of the changes made to the Joomla! source code since 2005. The names that appear are the users who have made changes to the source code. The stars/highlights represent commits made to the Subversion repository. The histogram to the bottom left displays activity. Look out for the date displayed in the right hand corner."

That "instance" floating around in there is me. Even without the "holy cow, that's me!" factor, this is a wonderful visualization tool.

Let's Just Call it the Canadian Conference Board of Incompetence

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:05:30 -0500

In The Conference Board of Canada's Deceptive, Plagiarized Digital Economy Report Michael Geist attacks the Conference Board for a variety of faults that call its claims of objectivity into question. Subsequently, in Conference Board of Canada Responds, Stands By Its Report he comments on their inadequate response.

What is perhaps most informative is this quote from the response "The Conference Board regularly produces custom research. Our guidelines for financed research require the design and method of research, as well as the content of the report, to be determined solely by the Conference Board." [Note to conference board: that is how you cite sources.]

This quote suggests that they take full responsibility for the incompetence, sloppy methodology, poor fact checking, and many other faults in their work. They appear to either be completely disconnected from reality or to be fully aware that they have no credibility whatsoever.

I suppose it doesn't matter which.

MySQL's Post-Oracle Future

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford (developer blog)) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:29:06 -0500

One of the oddities of Sun's acquisition by Oracle is that Oracle now owns the MySQL trademark. They also employ the largest concentration of developers who are familiar with the code base. What they don't control is the code, and who they no longer employ is a lot of the key people who got MySQL to where it is. So what's next?

From Oracle's viewpoint, there are three likely scenarios:

Ignore MySQL, let the remaining team go, hope it dies.
Try selling it off.
Embrace Open Source and continue to improve mySQL.

Consider each of these options.

Oracle Ignores MySQL, Hoping for a Withering Death

There's revenue associated with MySQL. It might be a trickle from Oracle's perspective, but it's more than enough to keep a good medium sized company running smoothly. Tens of millions of sites have absolutely no interest in moving to a new database manager, and there's heaps of MySQL specific expertise out there now. The MySQL revenue stream isn't going away soon. If Oracle tries this strategy, the MySQL code will soon emerge under a different name, and the resulting business will probably be all the more nimble for it's passage through Sun and Oracle. Not a likely scenario but good for MySQL nonetheless.

Oracle Sells MySQL

Good luck. Can you say embarrassing writedown? Sun's billion dollar acquisition of MySQL is right up there on the "WTF" scale, ranking with eBay's purchase of Skype and Google's acquisition of YouTube, all for stupid money. [Side note: M&A groups should refrain from hiring people who come out of the derivatives world.] Even then, name a buyer at any reasonable price. I can't think of one.

Oracle Embraces FOSS

Initially this looks like we're getting into geek porn fantasies. What can Oracle actually give MySQL that aligns with it's corporate interests?

There are some patents, well past the end of their productive life, that Oracle could release. This could give MySQL a few neat features that would improve performance. But these are small incremental gains at best. There's also no selective release here. Once those techniques are in a GPL code base, they're up for grabs by any open source project.

They could dump lesser versions of various core technologies into MySQL in order to set up a smooth transition to their proprietary products. This would introduce a lot of the "bloat" that made MySQL so popular in the first place. I think we'd see more nimble forks appear in no time. Not a great strategy.

Then there's the philosophical differential. The one thing that's evident from my work with Joomla, and my observation of other solutions in the same space, is that success in open source is all about building a strong collaborative culture around the product. While this isn't incompatible with running a profitable business, it is incompatible with the traditional "destroy the competition" approach. On the surface, capitalism in open source is not going to mix well with the capitalism as warfare.

Then there's the culture clash of Alpha Geek versus Alpha Capitalist. For a good example of this we need look no further than a blog post from Michael Widenius. He writes "Mr. Ellison, you are undoubtedly a master tactician. However, thinking two moves ahead in the open source world is not good enough. You need strategy. Long term, meaningful, viable strategy. You need to think years ahead, not just to the next fiscal quarter." There's nothing quite like a bonehead mix of arrogance and ignorance for your first move. Anyone who thinks Oracle got to the position it's in by purely tactical moves that look "two moves ahead" is clueless. Then the icing: Widenius closes with "I'd love to speak with you about it". Well, consider condescending to picking up the phone, buddy. If you think Larry's going to read your blog and give you a call, you might consider getting back onto your meds (or off of them, either way a state change is in order).

Beyond Strategy, what About Mission?

If you take a step back and look at the mission behind Oracle's numerous strategic moves over the years, you see their overarching mission: destroy Microsoft.

What's most interesting about this is that this ethos is also deeply ingrained in the thinking of many open source developers. It's a small step from "freedom from proprietary software" to "freedom from Microsoft" because Microsoft is the biggest, most obvious first target.

So there is a possibility that despite the cultural differential, Oracle may be viewing open source as a strategic weapon. It's also worth noting that along with Sun, Oracle gets the services of Johnathan Schwartz, who has demonstrated a crystal clear understanding of the open source model. As Mitchell Ashley notes in "Converging on Microsoft", Oracle is now in a good position to strike at Microsoft at a time of relative weakness.

If Ashley is right, Larry Ellison will become an active evangelist for open source, using Oracle's position to drive at the core of Microsoft's space. I'm sceptical of this. I don't think the enterprise world is ready to accept the idea of mission critical applications as open source, and I don't think Oracle's enterprise business is served well by this just yet. That won't slow Oracle down one bit. Johnathan Schwartz can become Oracle's open source advocate, speaking for that part of the business. Open source is walking its way up from the bottom, from compilers to operating systems, through servers and databases. At each stage it takes a little time to gain credibility and foothold, but the value proposition is compelling. If Oracle backs MySQL and proves that it is a viable solution in Oracle's original space, then it not only helps them advance their mission, it helps advance open source.

Predictions

Either way MySQL – or at least the code that is currently MySQL – is going to come through this just fine. That's the GPL in action: it's simply not possible acquire and kill good code.

I think we're going to see the third scenario. Oracle's support of Sun's open source technologies will be strong and unconditional. But this support won't extend to their enterprise applications. Not until the market is ready.

Whether I'm right or wrong, we'll see something happen quickly, within two quarters of the closing of the acquisition.

Social Media: Why Facebook; Why Twitter?

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:37:11 -0500

As either a younger member of the boomer generation, or an older member of Gen-X, I'm a member of a big demographic that seems to have a hard time understanding social media. The most common reaction I get to mentioning something on Facebook is "I will never have a Facebook account!"

I realize now that part of the bad reputation that social media has with middle-aged adults is due to the fact that most of these people are parents, and everything they know about social media sites has come from their kids.

This led me to a great insight. Good social media sites are malleable to individual users, and that's what makes them so powerful. I am certain that my Facebook experience is vastly different from that of your average teenager's, and that's a good thing.

A middle-aged friend recently asked me about Facebook and Twitter, with the subtext "I don't 'get' either of them." I've reworked my response a bit in hope that it will be helpful to others:

The main purpose of Facebook is to get found by people you already know but have lost touch with, think of the people you would invite to a high school reunion. Simple as that. It's also good for keeping up on the big stream of small things that winds up being news in a nominally mundane life. It works well if you're not "always on" the net. You can pop in every week or so and catch up. If you ignore the clever little time-wasting applications and notification noise, it's a useful tool. In short, Facebook is good at making an electronic link to people you already know.

Twitter is much more geared to making new connections and is really something for those of us who are "on the 'net" most of the time. What it's best at is finding new clever people, and getting breaking news. Information travels very quickly in Twitter, and to a large extent it's filtered to the interests of the people you follow, which means you get more information about the things you care about. As a writer, it's also superb at making you edit things down. The 140 character limit is brutal, but it enforces the practice of a clarity that can carry into other writing.

So how did I do? Is there anything else that "defines" these sites?

A List of Twitter Types

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 07:36:38 -0600

I've been "hanging out" on Twitter for about three weeks now. My interactions with it have evolved quite a bit over that time.

When I first got on, my attitude was "what's the point?" That became "okay, so this is the best part of Facebook minus the dumb applications and a lot of FB's cool-but-useless user interface." But along with this functionality came a challenging signal to noise ratio. How can you decide who to follow? It's certainly not by popularity. Some of the most followed accounts are little more than posts of the form "(hook text) (external link) more on (topic) at (posters_site)." In other words, "Here's something vaguely interesting on a topic we cover. Hopefully the first link will generate the expectation that our site has even more useful information, and you'll start using us as a source."

If that's all Twitter had to offer, I'd be gone by now. But despite the noise, there's quality in the signal when you find it. I have interacted with people with unquestionable intelligence, people with expertise in interesting areas, and people with humour and insight. Twitter is also undeniably a superb source for news, both global and local.

The other problem is that few of us are consistently brilliant, so even on an individual level there's no telling how many mundane posts you'll have to read before encountering the gem that makes it worthwhile.

So I have developed a list of user types for Twitter that I use as a guideline when deciding who to follow:

The "I am a Channel" type is interested in their follower count above all else. Every post they make returns to a gateway on their site, so they can pump up their traffic stats. Some are more subtle, but the ultimate goal is to make their web properties a destination.
The "monetize" type is intent on convincing you that they know how to monetize your online presence. Inevitably this leads you to a pitch for their e-books and/or training courses. Somehow I get the feeling that these people are all modern equivalents of the "Make $1 Million from Classified Ads" artists. why do I get the feeling that the way you monetize is by selling e-books telling people how to monetize?
The "I am a social media maven" type — which is distinct from an actual social media expert — is a variation on "monetize". All you have to do is buy/subscribe, and they'll show you how to get to the top of the social media heap. By and large, these folks would fare far better if fewer of them appeared to be laid off auto workers living in their mother's basements. The ones who seem to have some class wind up being the ones who value connections above all else. As I've said before, there's something unsettling about "hook up with me on LinkedIn as a trusted source, even if I don't know you from a serial killer".
The "random link" type finds purportedly interesting information and tweets it with a useless explanation, as in "wonderful (link)". I suppose that somewhere out there, the simple act of posting makes the link worthwhile, but in my experience so far, 85% of the links go to stuff that is old, dull, boring, or just plain not interesting. A complete waste of time. Explain what's interesting about the link, please.
The "topic feed" type usually picks a well-defined topic to post about and either relates facts about that topic or posts links with information relevant to the topic. Focus is the key to success here. If the topic is pig farming, it no good can come from posting random comments on abstract art.
The "expert" type goes one better than the topic feed. These are people with a real interest and some expertise in their field, and they regularly post observations and insights along with the "topic feed" fare. A significant number of posts from these people reference original content that hey have compiled or authored.
The "personality" type is someone who has a real world profile and is using Twitter as another channel for communicating to their audience. Think Obama.
The "community" type is a member of a smaller community that uses Twitter to keep up to date. This is what Twitter seems to have originally been designed for. Some of these communities have "personality" types, who have a significant profile in within the scope of that community.
The "shared mundanity" type posts nothing but tidbits from their life. As in "listening to x while doing y". There's a fine line here. Much of the charm of Twitter is getting a snapshot into other people's lives, but we don't need the whole film; odds are that you're just not that interesting. If none of these posts have any meaning, if they don't transcend mere observation, then the unfollow button is not far away.

The real challenge here is that most people exhibit a mix of these types, and probably a few more that I haven't identified yet. Twitter is all about constructing your own community and becoming a part of it. It's social media at its most fascinating.

Newspapers are Dead. Expect a Very Long Funeral.

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:42:22 -0600

Writing on ojr.org, Getty Storch asserts that "Papers must charge for websites to survive". There is a lively debate in the comments that follow, most of them are in disagreement with Storch's analysis.

This includes mine, which I reproduce here.

Anyone who thinks newspapers can survive on local content needs to spend a few weeks on Twitter. Here is a medium where news arrives in near real time, is reliable (since misinformation is rapidly corrected by others), and relevant. This applies just as well in a global environment. I have seen real reports from people on the scene of demonstrations in Thailand and Athens, and learnt about the supply of gas from Russia to Slovakia from people in cold buildings. Twitter and similar channels tell me about traffic jams on my route downtown, about power outages and emergencies in ways that no newspaper or even television station can ever dream of achieving.

Twitter has merely brought something that has been happening for a very long time into the mainstream. As a case in point, I learnt about the death of Princess Diana via an international online chat almost three hours before the local media picked it up. This is a decade ago. Times have changed.

Information is now free and it will remain so. Any attempt to charge for access to it is absolutely doomed. The only hope that news media, particularly "print" media have for survival is by adding value. This means aggregating sources, adding perspective, and performing astute analysis. Even so, most of the revenue from these activities will be derived from online advertising, and those revenues will be orders of magnitude below what the industry currently sees as normal.

The newspaper as we know it is dead. There is no model that will resuscitate it, period. Rigor mortis has set in, the patient just doesn't fully realize it yet.

Quick Rant: Animated Favicons

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:12:33 -0600

For those who don't know, a favicon is the graphic that shows up in the location bar and bookmarks of modern browsers. They're great visual clues that help you remember what's on a page.

It is possible to have this icon animated, at least for some browsers. DON'T DO IT.

Animated graphics are designed to catch your eye. Once your attention is caught, you're supposed to understand a message and respond. That response takes you to a web site. If a favicon is up, then you are already on the site, so animation just catches your eye and distracts you from the site. Anyone who thinks distracting viewers from paying attention to their site should get out of the business and consider a career as a utility pole.

The other possible thought behind an animated icon is that in a sea of tabs and bookmarks, the animation calls attention to your site. That might work, but if every icon is animated, then the result is a sea of irritation, so it's not a strategy that will work for long. As far as tabs are concerned... I just visited these sites, I can recognize your icon without having it wave at me. In fact, the second time it interferes with my attention, your tab will get closed.

Summary: Animated favicons have lots of drawbacks and little upside. Just say no.

Social Media: Stripping Meaning from Connections

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:08:56 -0600

I've been hanging out in Twitter for a couple of weeks now. It's generally amusing, and in some ways I can see it as useful. In a way, it's simply the most interesting part of Facebook (status updates) without the lame and cloying attempts at "fun". But one thing that's irritating about it is the "social media experts" and the "u 2 cn get rich" crowd. I would go on about this, but Michael Pinto has done a great job already in his post Social Media “Experts” are the Cancer of Twitter (and Must Be Stopped).

Instead I want to focus on a subset of Twitter users, the "Friend Troll". These people post multiple tweets, encouraging everyone to connect with them on other social media sites, usually LinkedIn. Now the premise of LinkedIn is that people use it to build connections between people that they know and trust. Obviously someone who gets the bulk of his or her connections from random Twitter followers is not adhering to this principle, which debases the entire concept.

I'm pretty sure that LinkedIn introduced the "Recommendations" feature as a way to combat this, but there's nothing to stop a savvy user from trolling for those, so it's of limited usefulness.

So what's required is some way to measure the level of respect that someone has for the sites that they inhabit. I have decided that, at least for sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, that the friend count / number of connections is a good metric. Unfortunately, LinkedIn generalizes the connection count, so "500+" is the best we have to work with. Let's run with that for a moment. Assume the person is 40 years old, and has been working for 20 years. That's just over two friends per month, for every single month. Roughly two weeks per person.

Maybe I'm a poor judge of character, but two weeks of accumulated interaction with a person is, in my experience, not enough time to build a stable trust relationship. By contrast if I take as an example a very personable fellow who I have worked with, who I trust, and who is CEO of a publicly traded software company, I see just under 100 connections.

So after surveying my connections profiles, I have developed the "LinkedIn Connection Credibility Metric".

1-10 Connections: You are either antisocial, or don't "get" social media.
11-100 Connections: You're "regular folk" and consider your connections before making them.
101-250 Connections: Difficult. If you have a customer facing job, your connections could be credible. If you don't, then you probably include anyone you've met in business and thus your connections are questionable.
251-500 Connections: If making connections with people is your only full time job, then this is possible, but still your connections are met with scepticism. If there are solid, meaningful recommendations to back up your connections, then maybe.
500+ Connections: Give me a break. If I connected with you, either I knew you before you went over to the dark side, or for some reason I thought you might be useful as a portal to someone I want to work with. Yes, I'm using you. But then again, you probably think that's what social media is about.

Assisted Suicide: YouTube Helps Music Goliaths Become Irrelevant

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:58:32 -0600

A few days ago, YouTube began muting the audio tracks of videos that contained "unauthorized" copyright material. Some videos will now have the notice “This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled.” displayed beneath them.

This is a good move for YouTube. It will help absolve them from any liability for "broadcasting" content that the RIAA cabal deems worthy of protection.

It's not such a good move for the RIAA and similar groups. A music track is an essential part of many videos, and we can be pretty sure that not many people who produce them are going to go to the trouble of obtaining copyright clearance. Instead, they're going to seek unencumbered music. This is going to drive up the demand for "open" music, which will in turn cause more musicians to provide the same in exchange for some small promotional credit on the video.

Thus a win-win is born. Video creators will have access to more music they can use, musicians will have a showcase for their work with a potential for global profile that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. How long will it be before this exposure results in a musician who "makes it" in the mainstream? It will only be a matter of time.

How will these musicians feel when a big label comes along to offer them a contract that pays a fraction of the revenue they actually generate while insisting that they turn their backs on their roots by joining the copyright cartel? Some will buy in to the promises and sign up, but some won't. Instead they'll seek new methods and revenue models for distributing their work. Perhaps they will make the bulk of their money from live performance, or maybe they'll find other ways to do it, but they will eventually succeed at it.

Once a successful formula has been found, those who seek to maximize revenue by controlling distribution will have lost the final step in their battle. They will have successfully spawned a revitalized industry that makes them irrelevant. This has always been inevitable, but YouTube's move will certainly accelerate the process. To me it is amazing how, blind to reality, this industry continues to find ways to kill itself off with ever greater efficiency.

Kudos to YouTube; still yet another dunce cap to the established music distribution business.

On the Enforcability of the GPL

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford (developer blog)) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:49:32 -0600

A comment from my last post asked me to back up the claim that settlements have lent weight to the validity of the GPL. I got some feedback from a friend and did a little research of my own and here's a summary of the stuff that's easy to find.

The developers of Busybox have been busy indeed:
March 6, 2008 BusyBox Developers and High-Gain Antennas Agree to Dismiss GPL Lawsuit
March 17, 2008 BusyBox Developers Agree To End GPL Lawsuit Against Verizon
July 23, 2008 BusyBox Developers and Supermicro Agree to End GPL Lawsuit
October 6, 2008 BusyBox Developers Settle Case With Extreme Networks

The GPL Linux Kernel has been defended in a European court verdict.

Many other successful settlements in favour of the GPL are available at gpl-violations.org.

Groklaw's article "A GPL Win in Michigan" discusses how the US courts have found the GPL enforceable.

Sun Microsystems gets the GPL, even if it doesn't suit them. in a CNET article from 2005, Jonathan Schwartz is quoted as not liking the GPL because of "the GPL provision that says source code may be mixed with other code only if the other code also is governed by the GPL". Sun's rather formidable legal team gets it: you can't mix non-GPL code with GPL code and still comply with the GPL.

This is just the beginning. The SFLC has launched a suit against Cisco on behalf of the FSF. SCO descends further into bad joke status by attacking the GPL, with IBM on the other side. Any bets on who will take that one?

On the flip side, there's nothing I could find where a challenge to the GPL was successful.