SoftwareShift

Wireless Smoke Alarms

This is a product but I felt underlying concept was more important and so, this post ends up under the "Movements and Trends" category.

Anyway,  First Alert has just introduced a wireless smoke detector for the home. The "wireless" part allows the alarms to talk to each other in the event of a fire. If one of the devices detect smoke, it notifies all of the others about the danger. So, all of the detectors in the home will sound and, consequently, you will have more time to react. Additionally, I believe their upgraded version of the device will also tell you the location of the problem.

I think that this concept is fascinating.  This device will pull information from the physical world, use software to alert other devices (or work together) and push the information back into the physical in a human digestible format. And do it all without human button presses. The next step for something like this would be to notify the occupants, if one was installed in every room, about the safest route out of the house.

Very cool use of software...We will see probably see many more things like this in the near future.

Onelink Wireless Safety Products via Gizmodo

GPLv3

The 3rd version of the GPL was released last week and mudslinging has already started. MS has asserted that it is not bound by the new version of the GPL and will not support any code licensed by it. Interestingly, the Novell-MS indemnification/interoperability deal should, according to the new version, force MS to GPL its code. That's never going to happen and my guess is that MS is going to force its partner's products to remain licensed under version 2 or its certain that no one has the disposable financial resources to pose a legal challenge.

I think once this new version has settled in we're going to start to see some return fire from the Free software camp. And unfortunately for Novell, SUSE Linux is probably going to be the central battleground.

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE - gnu.org

Microsoft Says It Is Not Bound by GPLv3 - via digg.com

GPLv3, the Q&A - tieguy.org (4 parts here)

Free Software Foundation Releases GPL 3 - news.zdnet.com

Community Development

I came across two interesting articles today. The first is about the strength and weaknesses of community in relation to open source development. It's a thorough article and the author concluded that community development is great for uncoordinated activities (bug fixes, refinements of existing products) but bad for creating anything new or innovative. The other article is about how Facebook is opening up its API and providing support for widget development community. The author then suggests that Facebook is going to benefit heavily from providing the API since the general community will actually supplement Facebook's R&D budget.

The difference in the concluded effect of community is very interesting. It highlights an interesting distinction. If you consider Facebook as a product, then community development can only refine Facebook and cannot directly materially change it. This is the small refinement issue that the first article discusses. However, if you consider Facebook as a framework (like design framework/pattern such as Ruby-on-Rails) then the community has the potential to use the framework in new and unanticipated ways. And that's innovation. Facebook can incorporate the community developments and it could evolve into something different than what the designers originally intended.

Though, realistically, the phrase 'could evolve' should be noted. There isn't any guarantee that the development community will leverage the framework. And if they do, will the developments be significant to remain compelling? Again, there isn't any guarantee. So, community development should be encouraged (because the benefits could be enormous) but not relied upon for any success.

The Ignorance of Crowds - via businesspundit.com

Myspace - the next Prodigy? - Redeye VC

Facebook Launches API - blog.programmableweb.com

Evolving Software Business

Here are two articles that I came across today describing how software is changing the landscape of the software business. The first is a transcript of an interview with Eric Schmidt (Google's CEO) and the other is an opinion article about Services 2.0. The articles have different focus but the common thread is software-as-a-service and how computing is moving from the PC to the Internet in the form managed niche services. The network is the computer! (I believe that was Sun's slogan several years back)

Text of Wired's Interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt - wired.com

Services 2.0 - A New World for Systems Integrators - sandhill.com

Rich Internet Applications and Operating Systems

Well, we are slowly moving towards a battle of the RIA frameworks. We have Mozilla's XUL, Microsoft's WPF/E, Sun's Java, Adobe's Apollo and several others. This week Adobe's Apollo launched and it received mixed fanfare. Some see it as simplified AJAX and others see it as non-standardized vendor lock-in. Either way, this is the future of the Internet.

However, farther down the horizon is the convergence of desktop OS and the internet. RIA is going to allow this to occur. The line between what is stored on your PC and what is on the Internet is going to blur. RIA is going to provide the seamless experience.

I think we are going to start seeing RIA applications by the middle of next year.

Apollo or XULRunner - And where�s WPF/E? - blog.flashgen.com

Apollo and RIA Thoughts - starkravingfinkle.org

Free Downloads and Information

I just came across an article discussing free downloads and its importance in regards to raising awareness and increasing market share. The author postulates that free download concept is just like piracy because they both raise awareness and in turn increases sales. Microsoft, for example, recently admitted that they benefit from piracy.

Underneath the business of selling, is the real issue: information. The first important aspect of information is that it is very easy to copy and distribute. The second is once past a critical threshold (number of users/readers/downloaders), information spreads very quickly. And at that point it is impossible to stop or control. The third is there is three types of information: free, legal, illegal. The aforementioned article refers to free and illegal(pirated) information being a conduit for legal(aka purchased) information.

A quick thought will reveal that, in terms of spreading information and raising awareness, free is better than piracy. Free is easier to obtain and distribute. Pirating is harder. Pirating usually involves bypassing some control mechanism (if it didn't have one it would be free) and no one wants to be a criminal. It stands to reason then if the goal is to get you information into as many hands as possible, then free is the correct course of action.

However, free is not in the majority. Most companies still adhere to the "we give you a product - you give us money" business model. So, these companies are constantly conflicted between wanting more users but not wanting free distribution. Because of this they sell controlled information via license keys, online activations and DRM. The problems with this are: vast resources are spent in trying maintain this control and piracy emerges because it is ultimately impossible to control information once its adoption is past the critical threshold (Note: some may also say that piracy emerges because the selling price exceeds the actual value but even if MS-Office was offered for 1 dollar someone would still break the control mechanism). Piracy ultimately helps these companies by raising awareness but at some point it is still a lost sale.

If information is freely available the three problems regarding information control disappear. Resources aren't devoted to maintaining control, piracy goes away because there is nothing to pirate and awareness increases due to the greater availability. Seems like free is better...

the free download isn't a frivolous act - radar.oreilly.com

Microsoft Exec Admits That Company Benefits From Piracy - techdirt.com

"Simple tools with simple rules" - Ross Mayfield

SandHill.com has posted an interview with Ross Mayfield discussing the Enterprise 2.0 buzzword. The "Simple tools with simple rules" statement describes, in a nutshell, the advantage of simple web enabled applications over tradition commercial-off-the-shelf software. Mr. Mayfield then states:

When users use technologies in an unstructured way – email, blog posts, adding links in wikis, and so on – the information structure reveals itself. "Off-the-shelf" software cannot be used outside of the context of traditional usage. The company controls the deployment and usage of the product.

The above is completely true, but there are two problems with web-enabled apps. The first is the feature set. If the feature set is too small, the value of the application is severely diminished because, from the user's point of view, it lacks completeness. No one wants to use a tool that only completes part of the job. And if it is used, a supplementary processes/applications must be used to finish the task. This is the multiple-step problem. Simple tasks should be completed from start to finish from a single source.

The second problem with simple applications is interoperability. If a process requires multiple simple applications, how do we move data between them? This implies: a physical transfer problem(moving a file/data from one site to another) and a formatting problem(is the data at the output of one process usable by the input of the next process?).

The solution is simplicity, customization, and standards. Web-enabled apps must be simple but customizable to the meet the user's process requirements exactly. Then generally-accepted standard data formats solve the interoperability problem. A good example of the customization and expandability is Yahoo's Pipes.

The Next Wave of Enterprise 2.0 - sandhill.com

Yahoo Pipes - pipes.yahoo.com

Future of Operating Systems

The most popular topic going around in the last few weeks is the state of the operating system. Much of this has been fueled by Vista's release and its perceived benefit. I think MS came up short here and people are now asking: "Is the monolithic OS still necessary?"

The answer to that is yes and no. Yes, because some of us still need to do offline computing and no because sometimes we don't. For some computer users both on the business and home sides, the PC becomes useless without an internet connection. Interestingly, I think there is a general desire to return to the client/server architecture that dominated the 80's but I don't feel that technology is there yet. Offloading computing to remote servers is still not easy and OS style user functionality hasn't been completely replicated in the web browser yet. There are things like grid computing, and ajax but the former is still hard to access for the average user and ajax is, at best, a band-aid.

So, I think there will be a continued push to remote web resources but there will still be PC's for a little while longer. I predict:

- Web OS's will continue to get more slick but will hit a wall with ajax. This will force a new technology to emerge. - Thin clients will begin to appear. Think flash memory, stripped down linux OS, a web-browser and wifi. - Bundled (PC-like) web services will be offered to businesses. Google will probably be first here followed by MS. The winner here will tie their services with the ISP's. Phone, Internet, Email, IM, and an office suite, online disk space, for one monthly fee. - PC applications will seamlessly beginning to integrate online data. The line between what is on your pc and what is stored on the net will blur. - Java, C#, and lightweight frameworks will continue as they have been. A shift in dominance will emerge by the language that fixes the web browser. We are still passing around text and relying on cross browser javascript for client side rendering. - Open Standards will be pushed to help address the previous point. - A potential unknown here is the effect of TV. An OS that that integrates TV/cable will be a serious contender. I wonder if this is google's plan.

2007-09 is going to be interesting...

GoogleOS Scenarios - readwriteweb via slashdot

Vista the End of An Era? - timesonline via slashdot

Whither Operating Systems? - Dr. Dobbs

Vista Followup Already in the Works - yahoo via slashdot

Google Apps to Become Paid Service - businessweek via slashdot

Amazon Cloud Computing goes beta - cbronline

S3 Meets R3 - Dr. Dobbs

The "Webification" of the Desktop: What Are the Implications for Web 2.0 and AJAX? - ajaxworld

Web Desktops

Like it or not, web desktops are the future. The ability to access your own environment from anywhere is compelling and technology to support it is already here: web browsers and AJAX, widespread broadband, multi user server environments and virtualization (maybe...many separate workstation instances?). I think we are now going to see a strong return to server-side processing and the client-side only being responsible for the display(think x-windows and display servers).

Here is a list of current Web OS offerings:
- ORCA
- eyeOS
- YouOS
- JaxTop
- DesktopTwo

I tried out a few of the demos. Some are slicker than others. The slower ones seem to rely too heavily on javascript to move display elements. Client side processing power is probably the primary limiting factor for web applications such as these. Jonathan Schwartz (Sun's CEO), in his blog, pointed out that using relying on someone else's browser to deliver this application is strategically dangerous. So, in the long term, either the web browser is going to be standardized and open (Mozilla/Firefox) or companies are going to provide their own client application (Google desktop).

Jonathan Schwartz's blog post: I Believe in Network Clients

Now the question is, how is this going to play out within the IT industry? I'm betting on Google. It has the all of the necessary resources available to pull this off: internet expertise, a functional AJAX toolkit, Google desktop, and plenty of disk space (gmail). On the other side is probably Microsoft. They could compete but it going to take a major strategy change to do it. Interestingly, it's been rumored that an OS is already in the works at Google and Vista is the last windows OS.

Is Vista The Last of Windows? - internetnews.com

Second Life, IBM and Business Modeling

IBM is running an experiment in the Second Life virtual world. They are using the site's 3D graphics capabilities to create virtual business meetings. Participants are supposed to manipulate avatars in a virtual meeting.

My guess is that this is not going to be taken too seriously, but implications of this type of system are considerable. Imagine a virtual meeting in a first person perspective (I'm not sure secondlife's third person perspective is the best), high resolution webcams and real-time rendering of your image, and VOIP. Coupled with a touch sensitive screen (tablet pc's are already here) for writing on a virtual whiteboard, this might be pretty cool.

As I'm writing this, I can't figure out why IBM's developers chose a game that renders in the third person. A first person perspective, provided by the Quake or Half-Life graphics engines, would definitely be more effective. All of the virtual elements associated with "presence" are better done in the first person. Maybe the developers see a need for a user to be able to see herself. I don't know. But either way, it's an interesting concept.

IBM's 'secret island' - regdeveloper.co.uk