Feb 01

dataportability.jpgWHAT: the Adium/Gaim/Trilian of social networks

WHY: social networks will follow the same trajectory of instant messaging services 5yrs ago. We were talking tonight on ReadWriteWeb about how many people misinterpreted Open Social as being an open data exchange initiative for social networks. That it was not, but Dataportability.org is. And as it gets adopted I predict we will see a similar sequence of events that led to the commoditization of the IM platforms. Consider this:

Right now we have a balkanized landscape of social networks, at least 15 major players with varying levels of dominance depending on the country. Remember back when you had to run ICQ and Yahoo messenger on your desktop alongside MSN messenger and AIM because you had friends on each network? Dashboard products like the ones mentioned above emerged though and they unified the messaging so you could chat with whomever you liked via a single interface. Effectively the IM channels became irrelevant – your only awareness of which “carrier” you were using was maybe the color of the dot by the person’s name in the dashboard.

Now granted, this analogy isn’t entirely analogous (probably more accurate would be the advent of the jabber protocol), but right now social networks are like the IM services were B.C. (before consolidation): you have to sign on to each individually and maintain disparate profiles in multiple places. But as more players adopt the blueprints put forth by groups like Dataportability.org and we transition into A.D. (after dataportability), you’re going to see the same type of commoditization occur to the social networks. Now keeping in mind Clayton Christensen’s “law of conservation of modularity,” value never just evaporates, it gets teleported to a different layer. Where do you think the value will reside once the networks themselves become commoditized?

Bingo- the unifying client that is used to manage one’s communication and presence across all networks. You won’t login to Facebook/Hi5/Orkut/Beebo/Linkedin/whatever to interact with your peeps at that point, you’ll fire up your _______ client and have a single place to talk with everyone and manage your identity. This sequence of events seems inevitable to me and the startup I would keep my eyes on (besides our own ;-) is the one that has killer Flex UI designers on staff and is living/breathing the DataPortability specs right now thinking down this path. If that happens to be you, drop me a line and let’s talk.

Jan 20

I started reading this one on the beach a few months back and just finished it today. Any book that
a) has a conversation with the Dalai Lama in it and
b) claims that happiness is an art that can be mastered
has my attention. I found this to be an extremely slow read though- I would pick it up and casually read a chapter here and there but would never fully engage enough to plow through it in a single setting. I think it was mostly the mildness of the message- if it were a big, spicy meal you could eat all at once but you can only handle a couple spoonfuls of babyfood in a sitting. Of all the ideas put forth in the book, the most interesting realization I had was this:

Art of Happiness:Life::Emyth:Business

The Dalai Lama advocates a similar methodology for advancing happiness in one’s life that Michael Gerber does for advancing one’s business with the main premise of Emyth (ie. work on your business and not just in your business). The book is a recap of private conversations with the DL while he was in AZ circa 1993 giving public talks. The interviewer is an MD with a background in psychiatry and neurology and adds in his own commentary. While there were no extraordinary “light bulb moments” from reading the interviews, I did find a couple ideas interesting:

We don’t all have to eat the same religious dish or even dine at the same restaurant. The DL has this meta view on religion that if it helps people be better people and more spiritual, then it’s a good thing (but only insofar as it accomplishes that). He doesn’t propose that Buddhism is the right religion. He instead equates choice of religion to the diversity of food tastes- the world would be a boring place if we all ate the same thing at the same restaurant. Having been raised Catholic for 15yrs of life, I had some seriously warped views of religion that took years to shed. The DL not only advocates religious tolerance but religious exploration to expand one’s spiritual palette.

Cultivating compassion as a weapon against anger The DL believes that by holding a compassionate state of mind through meditation that this feeling can be grown over time and that the only true way to dispel negative emotions like anger, jealousy, conceit, etc is by supplanting them with other benign ones. Western culture espouses the idea of “venting” anger through socially acceptable means. The DL would argue that this actually has the adverse effect of habituating the individual to the negative emotions and embeds them more deeply. His proposed solution is to displace rather than vent.

The way to transform suffering DL and enlightened individuals are able to shift perspective and treat suffering and adversity as an opportunity. You become thankful for your enemies and obstacles in the way that you are thankful for the weights in the gym: you may hate them while you’re lifting but you appreciate the benefits they yield and their role in stretching and strengthening your body. If life were purely a cozy cocoon in zero gravity with zero adversity we’d all be mushy objects devoid of any strengths and hard edges. Adversity provides the kiln that enables us to forge these strengths.

His “Green Mile” exercise He talks extensively about a Mahayana visualization practice called Tong-Len in which the practitioner imagines taking on all the world’s suffering and “laundering” it. It reminded me a lot of that movie Green Mile where the main character would inhale the illnesses of others. At the core of what DL proposes is this idea of establishing greater empathy and connection with others. By undertaking the “Green Mile” exercise we envision inhaling the suffering of others to spare them from it and in so doing help dissolve cultural barriers and commiserate with others in pain. These bridges of compassion across cultural boundaries hold the most promise for establishing a sustainable world peace.

Guilt- a completely foreign concept to Eastern thought DL believes that our natural mental state is one of peace and clarity and that all the negative stuff are just these artificial blemishes that mar an otherwise pure form. This is a very different proposal from the Catholic notion of original sin and guilt. Self-hatred and guilt just aren’t concepts that Buddhists understand, it would be like trying to explain trees or sand to an Eskimo. Apparently the DL is aware of these concepts but totally impervious, they pass through him and seem strange.

How to diffuse anxiety I liked his method for dismantling anxiety. Think of it like this- scenario:
a) the thing you’re worrying about does have a possible solution and therefore any energy you expend on worrying is time stolen from working towards that solution. so don’t worry.
b) there is no solution for the problem you’re worrying about (death & taxes) and therefore there is nothing that can be accomplished by worrying. so don’t worry.

His meditation on absence of thought This was actually one of the more interesting things I found in the book. Towards the very end he’s leading a room full of 1500 people through this mental exercise in which thoughts are banished from the mind until a state of total mental clarity exists and your mind is perfectly calm. What was interesting is that I had invented a technique of my own which is similar to this exercise for the times I have trouble falling asleep. This sounds weird but I’m able to hold this recursive thought that displaces the others and eventually “swallows itself.” My mind is going full throttle most of the time and this trick is the only thing that lets me fall sleep sometimes. It’s difficult to verbalize the technique but it’s something like taking this sentence:

What’s it like to think without thought.

And gradually having it eat itself so it becomes:

What’s it like to think without thought.
What’s it like to think without.
What’s it like to think.
What’s it like to.
What’s it like.
What’s it.
What.
.

I know that sounds weird (and probably counting sheep works just as well for most people) but the exercise he conducted reminded me a lot of this. It’s cool to independently arrive at a tactic that the DL uses himself.

All in all a decent book- a bit slow though. If some of these concepts seem painfully obvious, I wouldn’t disagree, but it’s always nice to have things summed up well in one place. The subtitle of this book is “A Handbook for Living” – I wish we would have studied this book in school growing up rather than the 10years of CCD education (ideas that have taken twice that long to unravel). If you like The Art of Happiness, here are some other titles that have a similar flavor and I found them to be more engaging:
Seven Laws of Spiritual Success
Four Agreements
The Alchemist

UPDATE: just noticed the random timing of this post coinciding with the Davos Forum. Clearly the DL’s answer to that question is the idea of cultivating compassion and empathy through these exercises. I would say in more practical terms of actionable things that can be implemented tomorrow- achieving mainstream awareness of microfinance sites like Kiva.org and incenting people with 1-to-1 tax breaks on all loans would be a huge step in the right direction. Entrepreneurship is the way forward for so many reasons and these micro-lending sites are proving to be hugely effective because there’s more dignity in a loan and when it’s paid back, those funds can be re-loaned. I just got an email an hour ago that a year ago via Kiva has been paid in full and the funds are available to be loaned to another applicant. This stuff does work.

Jan 18

Having just returned from Macworld late last night, here are a few thoughts/observations:

entrance.jpg

A massive ecosystem

It’s striking to see how many companies have sprung up around Apple products. Nothing like cramming all these people into the same spot to make you realize how many there are. They filled two ginormous exhibit halls at the Moscone center in SF. It was sensory overload walking the floor and the energy level was almost uncomfortably high to the point where you had conference fatigue after a day.

mainstage.jpg

Masters of buzz

They certainly have demonstrated they know how generate buzz. Aside from having a stellar UI in their products they had amazing visual presence at the show. With these cinematic and creative displays you have everyone with a camera posing for pics with Apple logos in the background and then talking about how incredible the setup was (me case in point right now). As far as product launches, nobody needs the new Mac Air but the way they present it sure makes you want one.

What got the crowds

By far the most interesting thing for me was to see which booths drew the crowds. Every now and then you’d come across a booth that looked no different from any other and yet there would be 100 people packed around it watching a demo while the others were desolate. These ideas aren’t rocket science but the popular ones consistently had either:

  • a charismatic speaker
  • a product that visually demo’d well
  • a hot brazillian model handing out free stuff
  • an interactive experience.
  • This last one was the real eye-opener: whether it’s a game of chance that involved competing for prizes or some type of interactive demo where the passers by were projected on the video screen and then the demo somehow incorporated them- it’s clear that people like watching other people, not products. If your product can be presented in such a way to incorporate the people there in the demo itself, it’s guaranteed to attract viewers.

    googlebooth.jpg

    Interesting products

    The two products that interested me most (aside from the new EVDO card from Verizon which I bought on site) were completely unrelated to Apple.

    smartboard.jpg

    The company SmartBoard had some impressive options for making a digital whiteboard. Their most inexpenisve setup allows you to utilize your existing projector to project against one of their pneumatic screens. Using your finger or one of their soft pens, you draw on the screen and it senses the position, sends that data to the app and draws ink as if you were writing on a whiteboard. Because it’s essentially just a touchscreen for a projector though, you can do anything you can with a mouse (ie. surf web pages on a whiteboard, mark them up, capture the digital ink to a pdf and share). It had some pretty fantastic OCR features too that would transcribe a whiteboard full of notes into text. They had other more expensive options that either incorporated one of their plasma TV’s or allowed you to use an overlay on an existing television screen. This seemed like a killer feature for teams that do a lot of brainstorming and it has a solid “wow” factor for anyone who relies on making a stellar first impression when collaborating with a client on a whiteboard.

    The other one that really grabbed me was Sawgrass. They provide an alternate method to creating t-shrits that involves dye sublimation printing with heat transfer vs. the typical silk screening process. It’s not a revolutionary technology but what’s impressive is the vibrance of the colors, how it doesn’t alter the feel of the shirt and the affordability of the system. It seems like it could enable a creative t-shirt company to bootstrap its way into a real business without much up front cost.

    Parallels took best in show for the 2nd year in a row. We’re happy for those guys. As their largest virtual appliance vendor currently, we love to see Parallels being received well. Their new Parallels server product looks slick and has all kinds of neat features that should make it very appealing for anyone who is heavily invested in OS X. That beta just started accepting signups and you can apply here.

    Lastly, Zimbra is looking really solid. We’ve had numerous requests for a Zimbra JumpBox and we hope to eventually deliver one as it’s something we want to start using ourselves. I was impressed with how responsive Zimbra was running in Safari 3. It’s almost indistinguishable from a desktop app and I’m assuming the offline access is even snappier. They’ve also bundled in a chat server (jabber?) to the latest version so you can have a central, searchable place for IM transcripts to accumulate for your company which is very cool.

    Conclusion

    If you’re into Mac products this is an impressive, high-energy experience I would recommend attending. The Mac market may still be a fraction of the PC market but the passion and vocal nature of its constituents means it moves twice as fast. The companies that ignore the Mac market citing present figures are going to kick themselves when its size rivals the PC market because by then they will have missed the boat.

    Jan 17

    I just got it.

    verizonUSBevdo.jpg

    I’ve been on the fence about getting an edge card for us recently. The people at the Verizon booth at MacWorld were giving away the cards and waiving the activation fee today- that was enough to tip the decision for me. We are getting to the point where we need flawless connectivity at all times when we’re on the road. The new version (USB727) supports their Rev A network and gets theoretical speeds of 3MB down and 1MB up. I’m on it now in the airport in SJC and here’s the actual result I just got via speakeasy:
    speedtest.png

    Not the fastest connection. I was getting 1MB down earlier today but even though the current speed is slow, I’m still stoked. It’s a classic “Innovator’s Solution” instance of “competing against non-consumption”- I’m thrilled to have any access right now.

    The VZ Access manager software that comes with it was trivial to setup and it worked right off the bat on Leopard OS. It has some performance diagnostics built into it, although it appears to be over-reporting the speed according to the Speakeasy results:

    vzaccess.png

    All in all I’m very happy with this purchase. At $60/mo with 30 days to try it out risk-free and $175 to back out of the two-yr commitment any time after that, it’s worth the price to me at this point to have guaranteed internet access wherever we go. I don’t know how it compares to Sprint’s EVDO network but I vowed 3 years back to never give those guys another dime. So far so good Verizon.

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    Jan 15

    I just noticed today is the 3rd anniversary of when I started writing this blog. I’m not going to do a lame recap or any forward looking vision for what this will become because frankly there is no plan- I just write whatever is on my mind. Reading that original post again it’s crazy to think how much my situation has changed and yet how much is precisely the same. It makes me wonder if it’s truly possible to write your way out of a paper bag into the life you want. There’s no agenda here other than to:

  • keep my friends and family abreast of what I’m up to
  • expose situations that aren’t right and give praise where praise is due
  • share critical insights from the things I read and the people I meet
  • chart the life of our startup for posterity’s sake
  • document tasks and concepts that i’d forget without this reference
  • air out my mental laundry and weird ideas
  • and have a high pagerank soapbox when I need it
  • I realize that when almost every post is tagged with the category “nerd,” it’s more a statement about the author than anything ;-) If there’s a topic in particular you’d like to hear more about, I’ve added the skribit application on my social page as a suggestions box. Starting this blog was a big catalyst for me to get my $h%@ together and make progress towards my goals. I recommend it for anyone who’s on the fence about writing publicly because you’ll find that the act of writing itself will help refine your thoughts and having it public makes you accountable for what you say (*note- i believe blog as a verb should be banned). Thanks for continuing to follow along and here’s to imagining where we’ll all be in another three years!

    Jan 14

    Ever wonder what snowboarding is like? I took inspiration from our friend Matt Asay and shot a video this weekend coming down from the top of Snowbowl in Flagstaff, AZ (beware, it’s shaky):



    I threw the song I just recorded on there as a sound track. Conditions are perfect right now, unfortunately the lift lines indicate that the rest of AZ knows this. More pics from our trip here.

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