Technology

I shouldn't be surprised…
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… but I am. Yesterday I read an interview with of the more well-known authors and journalists. He basically said:

I can never see any important being written inside the blogosphere that would not end up on the news.

Maybe he is right about that part. However is that the purpose of blogs? Definitely not, it never has been. The basic purpose is for “normal” people to connect to their friend via the internet and tell whatever they feel like. Is that good or bad? You might argue that blogs are increasing the total amount of information on the web, but in the era of search engines this is not a major problem. Therefore it is all good.

More on the future of the new improved media, partly blogs then read my other blog entries on the subject.

The only point I will give him is that we have a lack of structure in the web. There is too easy to produce information. Nowadays there is so much information that some help in this ocean is needed. I wrote an entry on that the day before I met the co-founder/president Mena Trott and Executive Vice President of Corporate Development Andrew Anker at SixApart that delivers what I think the best blog platform today.

Finally what we need is for the traditional media to start to get involved. As for the author. He needs to start realise that everything is evolving. We can either use to be part of the evolution and influence where it is going. Standing on the side, remembering the good ol’ days and complaining about change will never change anything. It will however bring in a lot of negative energy, which I think this world has too much of already.

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In the Wake of the Birth of Web
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“Did you know the web is 15 years old today? Huge change to the world in such a short time!”

The question is from a chat this morning with a very good friend of mine, Tom Calthrop, who is the founder and maintainer of the organization Barnraiser. For those interested in the history of the web can take a look here – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5242252.stm. You could also use some modern encyclopedia or maybe your flavor of the month Wikipedia.

Tom and I started to chat about the future of the web, the history and where it is heading. Tom pointed out that the web has evolutionary cycles thus “web 2.0” is merely a stepping stone in a long non-stop creative process. This is not something new and this happened during the last bubble where e-commerce and e-learning were equally hyped only to under deliver.

Interesting hey…

– I am thinking of giving away a shovel to my lawyer friend to help him in his daily work.
– Erik, why would you do that? It will not help him in his work?
– Of course not, but you never know. We are trying to provide him with internet solutions that are equally as stupid as giving him a shovel so why not?

Okay I am maybe a bit too sarcastic and I am a believer of the web. However, many in the business, so to speak, still believe technology solutions alone will solve the mystery, yet do not realize that successful and sustainable technology solutions all fulfill true needs of real people.

I will use some words by Tom here to illustrate where the opportunity arises: “Instead of writing all this hype I would prefer it is people explore technology today, social interfaces, social consequences and social evolution as affected by technology. Then we may all be better placed to develop real world solutions rather than just talk about something that has no relevance, but then I am tired with the “post-dot-com” brush of pessimism when it comes to all the discussion – all talk and no action.”

Action it is!

Why? People thinking outside their own little box have been changing the world throughout history and they are usually found in places where the resources are very much constraint and where there is a real need of change. Today emerging markets and the developing world provides us with this wonderful playground to exercise out creativity and still change the lives of people. For those who are hesitant I recommend that you read Hernando de Soto’s book “The Mystery of The Capital”. Whether he is telling the absolute truth or not is left for the reader to decide, however his points are valid.

Moving on to the core of anyone in the entrepreneurial game, that is the money flow and business models. We all need money for different reasons. Recently I have had quite a few discussions about business models and I do understand you need them, but you should realize what should be in them and why they are needed. Somehow this has been lost in this tumbling environment. The reason has been preached for quite some time by Guy Kawasaki so I am not the only one. The question according to me is: Isn’t it more important to convince your customers rather than investors? If no one buys your product, does it really matter that you have a lot of venture capital backing you up? If you are a venture capitalist, why would you support ventures that are hard to sell to the bigger market? If we are doing that, are we not just doing the same mistakes as we should have learned from last bubble?

Is there a right way to find out the business model? I am a true believer of the users as they always know the answer. Hand it to the users and they will tell you. Oh, so you don’t believe that is possible. Ask the Google boys. Create an extremely easy-to-use and flexible product, hand it over to the users and see what happens. React to the response and voila! They will then tell you what needs to be added and where the opportunity lies.

Now let us go over to a big challenge for the future.

We need to face the challenge of bringing the policy makers into the game and diminish the gap (not eliminate) between them and us to put it very directly. Now the industry is more or less experienced and has been taught a few lessons in the last boom. Tom’s words are put well here speaking about the web: “I also feel as though there are Bubble 1.0 veterans around to stop the hype, but the government/lawyer involvement in web together with the corporate mingling have all the hallmarks of chaos. As you know I am no Microsoft fan, but I absolutely cannot see why the European Union is fining them – a typical example of government/corporate/policy setting/messing that will stifle any software evolution (again).”

He is so right. Unfortunately one might add. The most dangerous development in any matter is the lack of understanding. Today many of the policy makers are lagging in their understanding. They haven’t followed the development and are in many ways several years behind in their understanding of the edge stuff of the web. In itself it is not a problem but in some ways they are too far behind.

However we should have faith. This is nothing new and the same thing happened 15 years ago when the web was born, as so for most other technologies. Look at the birth of the PC, the cars and not to mention the steam machine. There will always be a resistance towards the change, and so it should.

We will come there as we did come here. The will always be a lag between the readiness of the policy makers and their understanding of the technology edge. It is so hard to keep both in sync and I am not sure we should either. It is healthy in a way, and not healthy in another.

What we as entrepreneurs should remember is that we need to open up our minds to something new more exciting than to try to fulfill our utter most dreams of flashy technology. We should start to develop (technology) solutions for people and not for the sake of technology. Look for needs outside our little bubble and fulfill needs of real people. If you want call it user centric design, iterative prototyping or rapid prototyping, do so. What label we choose to put on this is less important however. Why? Because it is cool regardless and it has been done in for a long time already…

… and after all, it is in the same feeling the web was started. A few guys playing with a need to share research information, and thus they created something to fulfill that need. Who would have imagined that it would end up like this?

Now that is is cool!

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The future of the new improved media
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I have been interviewed by a number of newspapers and news channels lately. The main focus of the interviews has been the future of citizen media or as I prefer to look at it, The New Improved Media. I will try to give my view on the future of it and why it will work.

Parts of the intro-text to the main site are:

“… Delivering unfiltered, uncontrolled and as free news as possible is a crucial part of any work towards and/or to sustain democracy. Making people trust the news media and to enable them to feel part of the news making is equally important. … Imagine people being able to report back from events such as the London bombings, the riots in Paris and the recent events in Belarus or maybe just report from your neighborhood about any crimes or other problems.”

Looking at the on-going conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, the need for citizen journalism is as high as ever. We see a lot of reports on sites such as YouTube, and the discussions inside communities such as MySpace are more intense than ever.

Looking forward: What can we learn? What is the future? What can traditional media do? What can we as individuals do?

I believe some of challenges for the future in citizen media are:

  • Empowering all citizens of this world
  • Credibility and authenticity of the delivered content
  • Friendship between persons regardless of citizenship, ethnicity, race, religion and so forth
  • Solving the connectivity problem

People in regions such as the Middle East are frustrated – frustrated of embargos, tired of war and in many ways frustrated that their voices are not heard. The new media could solve this in many ways. The professional journalist is giving the professional, objective and thought-out version of the story, as does the professional photographer. By giving the working tools for the people on the ground, where event are taking place, people will be able to share their personal stories, the way they see in – in shaky, fuzzy pictures and videos from their digital cameras, their texts from cell phones and shaky voices in audio clips.

They will start to believe that there is someone listening to them, and that they are not alone. Exaggerated, all of a sudden common people will start to feel and believe that there are people listening to them, other than the fundamental religious groups. The concept is known and for the unbelievers I recommend that you read the book: “Naked blogging” by Scoble/Israel.

Unfortunately, just providing them with the proper channel is not enough. You will also need the credibility of the traditional media to make this channel legitimate in the eyes of both the people in the troubled areas and the audience in the rest of the world. Today, many websites such as YouTube suffer from the fact that the authenticity cannot be validated. I do not blame these sites for this, but nevertheless, in order to make the citizen contributions valid, there is a crucial need to create an organization that addresses the authenticity of the citizen reports. The problem is found in both the policy (makers) as so partly in the technology. If the traditional media would get involved the situation would definitely change.

What about the friendship part?
This is according to me the most important part. If anyone wonders why, I thought I would give you an analogy to see the simplicity. When you buy a new TV, you usually ask your friends and family for advice to see what they think and what they have bought. Likewise you do when you trying to digest matters such as the crisis in the Middle East. How can this madness continue? Who is to blame? What can I do? You are asking your friends and family. Sitting at cafés, bars, around the dinner tables and talking about the problem. Trying to understand.

Wouldn’t it be better to also ask and/or listen someone with first hand information? Someone with a human face. Someone to relate to. Someone that will give you the unfiltered, unbiased(?) and uncensored truth.

– Come on, Erik. That does not exist!
– You are so right my friend, but it should!

Why will this work? The philosophy behind the UN and the European Union is to build friendships and relations between countries to prevent them from getting into arguments /disputes that end up in wars. It is a known fact that you don’t, hopefully, attack your friend. (At least my friends don’t.) What is so cool today is that modern technology enables borderless and “blind” communication between all individuals, especially when you enable wireless posting via cell phones such as SMS and MMS. You can speak to anyone, anywhere at anytime. Why not use it? The New York Times columnist Thomas L Friedman writes about it in his book “The World is Flat” even though I think that the conclusion is even broader than he concludes in his book.

Wow! Why hasn’t it been done before? Actually it has, but the obvious potential was not seen for some reason. Today in the troubled and/or rural area of this world, there often is no internet, no high-speed connectivity, and no DSL connection. Still their voices must be heard, should be heard and must be heard. As cell phones today are almost ubiquitous there they become the obvious choice.

The “right” solution therefore relies on the facts:

  • Cell phones today transmit audio, video, graphics, photographs and text.
  • When combined with the proper web application, cell phones enable any citizen in any country of any background to publish information and share it with the world.
  • Citizen journalism (or grassroot journalism), coupled with traditional journalism, results in better, more informed and credible news reports.

My project here at Stanford takes advantage of all of the above and I have created a way for anyone to blog to your blog, your photo gallery, your video gallery with their own cell phone. The only thing needed is a cell phone and some quick setup screens online. Soon setup via SMS will be enabled.

Cool, but if a person cannot write? Anyone can take a picture, a video or even tell their story via a simple phone call (see the cool technology by PodTech, Typepad/Skype) or audio clip. A picture tells you more than a thousand words and a video even more. User experience research has shown that the keypad of the cell phone can be replaced by symbols thus enabling illiterate people to send in messages.

The technology is here. Are we?

I am as a friend told me today, hopelessly optimistic about this. I however am not naïve. We will need to give it some time, but we will get there! I believe in humanity and the good of the people. The good guys always win. At least in my world. :)

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Where is the geospatial web heading?
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I attended the Where 2.0 conference earlier this week. The topic as to address the new GeoWeb, which in short is simply mashup of content based on location. The conference highlighted strategies and different applications in this very interesting field. My thoughts and reflections on the conference are:

Lesson 1 You need data, data, data…
You can have the coolest application, but if you simple don’t have the data, the true potential is really lost. Data should be as freely available as possible, accurate and for the whole world. This is a tremendous task and my impression is that many of the big players at least partly are underestimating the necessity. In many ways most attempts are very US-focused, even though some players are starting to realize this. This is especially true for the big mapping projects, as you map is never better than the data you put into it, which is a well-known problem.

Lesson 2 Business models are the problem, not the technology.
I saw quite a few applications that some way or the other had a very cool and flashy appearance, but it was very unclear how this would produce a revenue share. Guy Kawasaki’s comment – “Okay, so you have a cool product, then what…” – is something that tends to gets lost in this hype.

The interesting analogy to the social web is thus very interesting. Before the social web matured the same problems were faced. I think the GeoWeb will pretty much face the same problems.

Lesson 3 Cellphone GPS applications are still not market ready.
This is very simple: There are not enough GPS-enabled handsets combined with the resistance from cellphone operators pretty much makes any attempt in this field highly questionable from a business perspective. If you would like to go into this field it is simple. Make sure you have a well-defined audience in which you can control their handsets and maybe even more important operators. There are some companies doing things right here and I would recommend to take a look at ULocate – http://www.ulocate.com.

Lesson 4 The privacy problem with location based.
Answer these questions: Do you really want everyone to know where you are, have been and also keep track of that. What stops your boss to install this on your cellphone? What are the long term consequences? Do we really want to live in a big brother society? Are there enough advantages to overlook the dangers?

I see this a broader debate on the web as whole. However, developers and solution architects need to start to think in these paths. The sense I got from talking to some developers at the conference and outside is that many developers tend to hide from addressing these issues. I think of a quote from the one of the managers at Google Earth (commenting something else though): “Just because you can do it, does not mean that you should do it…” Unfortunately there are a lot of developers that do this big mistake.

Lesson 5 Cellphone operators are still the main obstacle for any.
You are using someone else’s network and thus you need to ask for permission. I see very little big potential in only mashing up locations, without providing the customers with a mobile solution. The network of interest thus is the cellphone network. All that have been doing anything in that field knows that you need their permission. I think that they definitely have bigger power than they should, and a lot of work needs to be done here. I will leave this discussion simply by saying the rather obvious: If you need GPS-data via your cellphone, you must have access to it. Otherwise the user experience will be too poor.

These are the lessons I learnt at the conference. To conclude I saw a lot of cool applications, yet with very unclear purpose. What is the need to have the applications? What is the market, if any?

I was amazed listening to the big players Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! who all are kind of fumbling around figuring this out. How they are going to take advantage of this opportunity. Interesting enough I think that Yahoo! has been more successful than the others. They linked their geospatial initiative to their social web initiative, which diminished the pressure of making money on the geospatial initiative itself.

It does make less sense to launch a location based service without any cellphone application. To really make cellphone applications to take off, there is a huge need for policy making on both national and international level to erode the monopolistic atmosphere on the market. For now many companies get stuck in partnership discussions and the further development of their products is halted. Initiatives like wireless phones and wireless enabled flash cards together with proper lobbying campaigns will force the market to open up, and it can really take off.

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