Apparently, there's an interesting thread over on a site called Quora about the future of Firefox. I say apparently, since I can't seem to join the site (“we'll e-mail when we're ready for you to try out the service” - thanks a bunch: obviously it's only for the Chosen Few). Anyway, according to TechCrunch, the meat of the argument is this:
On Open Enterprise blog.
As rumours swirl about Google buying Digg, spare a thought for the parlous plight of the open source version, Drigg:I took Drigg this far, but I am fatigued. I wrote Drigg not out of passion for programming, but because I felt that the whole world needed it. I wrote several thousands of line of code in a very short time, and kept fixing bug after bug. I also took the step of splitting Drigg into several sub-module--a painful, bold and much needed move. Not, the big reports are very few and Drigg is very well structured.
I am now looking for a new co-maintainer who can take the lead in Drigg's development. I am not a programmer, and I don't feel I am the right person to push this project any further. There are important features that need to be implemented, and I am just too slow. I am not a very skilled programmer, and it simply shows. The code is good out of immensely hard work, and this means that development is slow. I feel the community deserves better.
I will still be here! People who know me and trust me know that I will hold the hand of the new maintainer and will make sure that everything is going the right direction. I will be here, via email, IM, phone, etc. The new maintainer needs to know:
* PHP
* Drupal modules
* Javascript
If you would like to take over an immensely important, exciting, lively project, please let me know now ("merc" followed my "mobily1" and then ".com").
Someone?
For all its faults, TechCrunch is arguably the leading tech blog. But it has been content to remain on the sidelines - commenting rather than jumping in. Until now:I’m tired of waiting - I want a dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen web tablet to surf the web. Nothing fancy like the Dell latitude XT, which costs $2,500. Just a Macbook Air-thin touch screen machine that runs Firefox and possibly Skype on top of a Linux kernel. It doesn’t exist today, and as far as we can tell no one is creating one. So let’s design it, build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create them.
What's interesting about this - aside from the fact it marks a major shift for TechCrunch - is that it takes for granted that GNU/Linux and Firefox will be the foundation of such a system. Indeed, it is remarkably close to the story I posted below.
As for the name "Firefox Tablet", I say: go for it, Mark....
There's an interesting set of data on TechCrunch derived from the consolidated activity of users of the RescueTime service. This shows you exactly how long you are spending on each app; the aggregrate results therefore provide fascinating insights into what people in general - or at least RescueTime users - are doing
One caveat is that the service seems to be aimed mostly at Windows and Mac users (although a GNU/Linux version is available), and so results are necessarily skewed. Despite this, there's an amazing result amongst the data: the ninth most-used app is Thunderbird.
Now, its usage (2.26%) may only be around a sixth of Outlook's (12.44%) but that still seems to me to be astonishing. It also suggests that Thunderbird is doing rather better than many - myself included - assumed. The received wisdom is that Firefox is storming away (unfortunately, there's no breakdown by browser in the RescueTime set: things are shown by site, rather), Thunderbird is miles behind. That seems not to be the case if these figures are at all representative of the wider world. And even if they're not, it suggests early adopters are, well, adopting Thunderbird in significant numbers.
The Kindle is a breakthrough device, in many ways analogous to the first iPod. Just as the iPod brought MP3 players to the masses, the Kindle will be the device that introduces ebooks to many people.
And while Apple sells lots of songs legally on iTunes, the vast majority of content on most iPods comes from home-ripped CDs or was obtained in violation of copyright laws. I expect the same thing with the Kindle. Users may buy a book or two on Kindle, but many users will simply steal the content they want to read.
Sorry, Michael, violating copyright laws is very different from "stealing", as you should know. Moreover, "home-ripped CDs" are not even violations of copyright laws in many jurisdictions (and shouldn't be in any, since it's clearly a fair use/fair dealing.) Confusing these facts simply plays into the hands of the copyright bullies.
Here's someone else who gets it: Yahoo Music VP of Product Development, Ian Rogers.I’m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I’ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don’t have any more time to give and can’t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.
(Via TechCrunch.)
I didn't comment on this piece from TechCrunch entitled "The inevitable march of recorded music towards free" since it largely recapitulates stuff that I've been wittering on about for ages (although it's good to see an A-lister joining the choir).
However, what is really interesting is the level of, er, wrong-headedness exhibited in the comments - about how copying digital files is "stealing" (infringement of an intellectual monopoly, actually), about how musicians never create without concrete financial incentives (oh yeah? Ask Schubert), how no one could make enough money from touring to make up for loss of income from CDs (apart from these musicians, that is) etc. etc.
If the readers of TechCrunch can be so ill informed, maybe this is going to take a little longer than I thought (or maybe TechCrunch readers are dafter than I thought....)
TechCrunch notes the rise of a new class of services:part blogging, part genealogy and part something unique. They are focused on the very long term - getting and then keeping customers for decades, and encouraging friends and especially family members to join, too. Once they’re hooked, they’ve spent so much time building content that they are very unlikely to ever leave.
Nicely viral, obviously, but what really interests me is the potential of making all of this information freely available across the Net, rather than just locking it in silos (as I imagine much will be). Imagine an intelligent spider, searching, sifting and correlating the information: it would allow a tapestry of life to be spun across the entire planet (or at least those parts using such sites). Tricky privacy issues, of course....
Here's an example of TechCrunch doing its job well:I was going through CEO Gil Penchina’s Wikia presentation slides at the Le Web conference in Paris last month and noticed something that made me realize they could be a huge site some day. According to the company, Wikia is producing 2.5 million page views per day and growing steadily, and their new article growth rate tracks the early days of Wikipedia, nearly identically.
I don't normally comment on these kind of in-house spitting matches, but I can't help feeling that five years down the line, this will turn out to be quite a pivotal moment.
The Editor of TechCrunch UK, Sam Sethi, about whom I know nothing, has been fired by the TechCrunch god, Michael Arrington. You can get the official TechCrunchy story here; speaking as a UK journalist, ex-publisher and nascent blogger, I have to say it is about as convincing as Tony Blair's explanations of why we need ID cards. But what's really interesting is that it touches so many nerve points.
For example, we have the rather droll sight of Arrington accusing his employee of "crossing the line" on ethical behaviour. Since TechCrunch is one of the most supine blogs in the Web 2.0 world, I can only assume that this means it crossed the line by becoming too critical. Judging by the very restrained comments about Le Web 3, this certainly looks to be the case: as a Brit hack, I have to say this is very mild stuff about what seems to have been a pretty poor conference.
Moreover, as several of the more perceptive comments to Arrington's post point out, there are important cultural, not to say legal issues, here: you can't just fire people on the spot for anything less than gross misconduct, which certainly hasn't taken place as far as I can tell, and using all normal definitions of "gross".
The whole affair is particularly amusing because Arrington has managed to break three cardinal rules of blogging. First, you don't delete blog posts. It just isn't done, unless there are legally compelling reasons to do so. Second, you certainly don't try to defend your deletion in another blog post, since this will only amplify the maladroitness of the initial action.
And finally, you must never think to punish a really a good blogger by firing them, for the simple reason that they will simply go elsewhere and do it on their own (benefiting from all that lovely free publicity you've just given them), leaving you looking stupid, and them clever.
The fact that Arrington seems not to understand these issues speaks volumes about the exclusive world of venture capital-backed blogs - and the fact that in the near future, some of them are going to come a cropper, as good bloggers find that managing other bloggers ain't so easy. Not so much the beginning of the end, but certainly the end of the beginning.
Update: Michael Arrington has more on his side of the story.
How could I not love this totally pointless site? Actually, come to think of it, I'm sure it'll feed into some interesting mashups. (Via TechCrunch.)
One of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 is the ability to combine data from various sources - the mashup. And yet, in a sense, mashups so far have been purely additive: you take something and add it to something else to create a third. The two sources rarely meet in any deep way to forge some truly new information or insight, other than ones born of clever data representation (not to be sneezed at, either).
That's what makes the new Swivel service important. The Web site reveals nothing currently, but TechCrunch has some tantalising details:the site allows users to upload data - any data - and display it to other users visually. The number of page views your website generates. Or a stock price over time. Weather data. Commodity prices. The number of Bald Eagles in Washington state. Whatever. Uploaded data can be rated, commented and bookmared by other users, helping to sort the interesting (and accurate) wheat from the chaff. And graphs of data can be embedded into websites. So it is in fact a bit like a YouTube for Data.
But then the real fun begins. You and other users can then compare that data to other data sets to find possible correlation (or lack thereof). Compare gas prices to presidential approval ratings or UFO sightings to iPod sales. Track your page views against weather reports in Silicon Valley. See if something interesting occurs.
And better yet, Swivel will be automatically comparing your data to other data sets in the background, suggesting possible correlations to you that you may never have noticed.
This is really heavy stuff, and will allow truly new information, and new kinds of information, to emerge from the comparison of other data - something that gets stronger the more data that is uploaded. And what makes me think it's going to be hugely successful is that it has a viable business model attached:Not all data will be public. The companies business model is to provide the service for free for public data, and charge a fee for data that is kept private. Private data can still be compared by the owner to public data sets.
Which is exactly what you want: all the benefit of the public data, but none of the issues of sharing your own. Essentially, this allows limited private grazing of a new data commons, whose overall creation and care is paid for in part by that grazing. Brilliant.
Update: Swivel is now up, in beta at least. Inevitably, there's not much to see yet.
I hadn't heard of Nuvvo, but now I have, I'm not surprised by this item from TechCrunch:We wrote about Nuvvo, a brave startup taking on an open source competitor, last January. However, Nuvvo is now up for sale.
The "open source competitor" is Moodle, a course management system, which is one of the jewels in the free software crown.
As the TechCrunch headline puts it:Fighting open source competiton may be foolish
Yup.
I have animadverted before upon the fact that I find TechCrunch - for all its undoubted virtues - just a little too breathless in its excitement over Web 2.0 startups. So a wry smile did play upon my lips when I came across the aptly-named Techcrush:
Techcrush will review the progress of web 2.0 startups 6 and 12 months after they debuted. Did their apps turn out to be a success or a failure?
No points for guessing which way most of them will turn out. (Via Alex Bosworth.)
With all the frenzied blogging activity that is going on, it's easy to lose track of who's doing what and why. That makes this Business 2.0 feature all-the-more valuable. Despite it's rather vulgar title - "Blogging for Dollars" (yes, shocking, I know) - it's actually one of the best mini-histories of the big-name bloggers.
For example, I've always wondered how TechCrunch's Mr Arrington managed his stratospheric rise from zero to blogger hero in a bare 12 months; now I learn that he comes with quite a pedigree:Arrington, a 36-year-old entrepreneur behind a long list of unrecognizable startups, has suddenly become one of the rising stars of Silicon Valley.
...
Arrington also stumbled into the blog business. He was tossing back drinks at a bachelor party in Belgrade in 2005 when another Silicon Valley entrepreneur called with an idea for a startup based on the new technologies that have come to be lumped together as Web 2.0. Arrington began doing research about the emerging tech trend. He couldn't find one comprehensive source, and as he compiled his information, he decided to post it on a blog. "It was purely a hobby," he says.
This also explains what I see as TechCrunch's biggest problem: its reluctance to call a dog a dog. Too often reviews end with some mealy-mouthed cop-out along the lines of "well, I can't quite see what the point of this me-too video Web 2.0 site is, but it's not bad and maybe somebody will like it", which is less than helpful. (Maybe this is why I love The Reg - there's nothing like a bit of sarky Brit journo bile.)
The rest of the piece has other useful backgrounders on the alpha bloggers. Do read it if you care about any of them. If you don't, well, er, don't. (Via TechMeme.)
Comments are the ichor that courses through the blogosphere's veins. A blog with no comments is probably dead, and a blogger that doesn't comment on the blogs of others probably needs to get out more.
But if it's hard enough keeping track of all the interesting things happening so that you can blog about some of them, keeping track of all the comments to your comments has been practically impossible. No longer. As this TechCrunch piece notes , there are now no less than three rival services that will help you track comments. Maybe I ought to try one.
This isn't really open source, but it seems to me that the underlying idea has much in common with the open source development process - call it half-open (or half-closed). Here's TechCrunch's explanation:Utah-based Logoworks, which just relaunched a major new user interface, has an innovative and inexpensive way of creating corporate and other logos for customers. They outsource the project to interested and pre-approved designers who come up with design concepts. You then pick the concept you like best and iterate from there. Designers are paid bonuses based on having their designs chosen, and so a very efficient and competitive market is created around each logo creation project.
Although TechCrunch frames this in terms of the "competitive market", I prefer to think of it as a Darwinian selection process that is akin to what happens with the larger open source projects. In any case, it's an interesting application of that idea in a general commercial context.
Well, it had to happen. After all the innocent tagging fun at bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, somebody has now come up with a vulgar commercial application: social shopping. It's called Stylehive, it has a nicely minimalist site, and seems a paean to pointless consumerism. (Via Techcrunch).
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