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September 30th, 2007, 09:33pm
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Ever been in line for a Grande double semi fat Mocha Frappo Cappucino with an Espresso Vanilla twist, popped your iPod earphone out to place the order with the barista, and found the Starbucks was playing a better song than you were listening to? And if so, at that moment did you really, really want to buy it? Well if you answered yes you may want to rethink some things about your life, but you should be happier soon because according to the New York Times:
Starting tomorrow at certain Starbucks stores, a person with an iPhone or iTunes software loaded onto a laptop can download the songs they hear over the speakers directly onto those devices. The price will be 99 cents a song, a small price, Starbucks says, to satisfy an immediate urge.
I’ve been waiting for this announcement for a long time, because it just makes so much sense (particularly since Starbucks has been running HearMusic cafes for years that are tied to CDs). The obvious problem, however, has been one of business models - Apple only makes a few cents a song at best. If Starbucks wants to make a few cents too, there just aren’t enough cents to go around to make any sense.
So why now? Well I think we continue to slooowwwllly move towards a more fundamental shift here. As I posted back in June, the most successful musician of all time has seen the writing on the wall and has a new label - Starbucks. Now let’s pop back to another quote from the NY Times article:
Impulsive music lovers will have to sign onto the cafe’s Wi-Fi network to discover what song is playing over the Starbucks speakers. With a few taps, users can download the song onto their iPhones (which double as an iPod), or the new Apple iPod Touch with its wireless connection. The 99-cent charge will appear on their phone bills.
Interesting. So (for example) Paul McCartney lovers can buy the album from the Starbucks label, with their iPhone, in a Starbucks. That seems to eliminate somebody from the music industry equation - those pesky legacy labels. And why might that matter? Well, to quote the article again:
Mr. Entner said the sticking point on the growth of the phone as a full-service payment device had less to do with technology, which is adequate, and more to do with business questions. He said that all the potential participants — phone carriers, retailers, credit card companies, music labels — wanted a cut of the action, and it was not clear how the money for over-the-air payments would be divided.
For example, he said, the mobile-carrier profits for downloadable songs were about 3 cents a song, which he deemed “razor thin.”
Razor thin indeed - but let’s just say one of those “participants” account for a lions share of that cut. But if you could get a musician out of the clutches of the old labels, there might just be a heck of a lot more money to go around for everyone else (including the artists).
At least that’s what I keep hoping is happening here - Apple, Starbucks and others are using Trojan Horse tactics to force the music industry to somehow, someday, move to a much better model than what they’ve been clinging to.
Of course, I also see what Apple is doing with the iPhone right now, so I won’t exactly be surprised if songs I might buy at the Starbucks are rendered unlistenable if I grab my next coffee at the Second Cup.
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September 30th, 2007, 09:01am
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Good article in the Wall St. Journal about Vicipapeida, a Latin version of Wikipedia. While, the number of entries is still modest (the 57th largest, tucked between Azeri and Ido), the active users dilligently try to use an ancient language to keep up with modern articles. For example, information about Britney Spears can be found under Britannia Spears.
From the article:
It’s not that ancient Romans didn’t know a thing or two about wild sex. They had their Bacchanalia, after all. But lacking video technology, they had no expression for “sex tape.” And that is why writing about Paris Hilton in Latin can sometimes be so difficillimum.
The editors of Vicipaedia Latina, the Latin version of the popular Wikipedia Internet reference site, were thus forced to wing it. In their article about the hotel heiress, they described Ms. Hilton’s famous X-rated Web video as pellicula in interrete vulgate de coitu Paridis.
Which means, more or less, “the widely disseminated Internet movie of Paris’s sex.”
Improvising like that is necessary when using the language of chariots and togas to account for the world of SUVs and navel piercings.
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September 28th, 2007, 05:28pm
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Kim Polese, co-founder of Marimba, and current CEO of SpikeSource was a speaker at a recent New Paradigm conference. When asked about her experience selling open source software to companies, she made the following very insightful comments:
“People don’t want to buy open source, they want buy lost cost, high quality applications… If we go out there and try to sell against a proprietary alternative by saying, ‘hey its open source, its better’ it doesn’t work. We have to sell on the basis of cost and features and the advantages [such as] the flexibility and the ability to tailor it.”
This got me thinking about open source evangelists. These are the folks (you probably have a few in your organization) that for one reason or another believe that open source is always the way to go – that it’s simply better, no matter what. This is the group that doesn’t understand that open source is simply another licensing model, not a religion.
I understand the value proposition of open source; however, open source for the sake of open source, just doesn’t make sense. In the end, users don’t really care if the code is open or not; what they want is reliable software that gets the job done. So for those familiar with the Colbert Report, I am starting an “On Notice” board of my own. While I’ve padded the list with a few obvious offenders (non-recyclers, non-voters, and Apple for their recent beef with iPhone customers), the one one we’re concerned with today is open source evalgelism.
As Kim points out, “Open source is very clearly now a core component of enterprise IT architecture.” This is true, but she also alludes to the fact that there are challenges with this model as well. Companies looking for a turnkey solution are better off steering away from open source. Similarly, enterprises that buy solely on the basis of acquisition cost without an accurate understanding of TCO will be unpleasantly surprised when they find themselves having to hire an army of developers to maintain the “build, test, patch” pattern associated with open source software development.
The decision of whether or not to choose open source needs to be a pragmatic one. There is a trade-off to be considered and that is generally cost versus risk versus functionality. You might be able to get away with optimizing two of these points, but you can never have all three. The acquisition of cost of open source software is certainly lower; however, the risk associated with ongoing support, maintenance, and integration of new functionality is often much higher. Sometimes it makes sense to take the risk (or to mitigate it using established open source support vendors such as RedHat or Oracle) and sometimes it doesn’t. Clearly, it’s a business decision, not a spiritual one.
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September 28th, 2007, 08:25am
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Tim Wu of Slate.com posted an interesting article yesterday looking at why municipal Wi-Fi networks have been a flop - with a particular focus on defining the potential roles of public and private players and reigning in some unrealistic explanations. The short article is well worth the read, leading to this concluding paragraph from Tim:
The lesson here is an old one about the function of government. When it comes to communications, the United States relies on a privateer system: We depend on private companies to perform public callings. That works up to a point, but private industry will build only so much. Real public infrastructure costs real public money. We already know that, in the real world, if you’re not willing to invest in infrastructure, you get what we have: crumbling airports, collapsing bridges, and broken levees. Why did we think that the wireless Internet would be any different?
Why indeed. There’s also a link to an interesting article by Paul Boutin from September 2004 (also on Slate) on why high-speed Internet access won’t be free. To quote Paul and his prediction at the time:
The plan is to mount up to 16 Wi-Fi routers per square mile on streetlights in order to provide “some level of free wireless Internet access to everyone living, working or visiting the city.” Boston and Madison, Wis. are also considering citywide Wi-Fi that’s free, or at least cheaper than DSL. You might think this means that wireless will be free everywhere in a few years. You’d be wrong.
He, of course, goes on to say why you’d be wrong (again, worth reading)… and it turns out he just might have been right.
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September 27th, 2007, 05:31pm
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Once again, it’s time for a weekly(ish) tour of a few of the interesting places wikinomics is popping up in the blogosphere. Without further ado, here’s a sample from the last few days…
Enterprise 2.0 in our firm - “Jimmy the new age worker” discusses how his accounting firm can use “readily available tools and services right away to improve employee morale, effectiveness and company competitiveness”… very interesting discussion.
Prosumption and a pocketful of kryptonite - A very articulate posting related to Second Life, of interest to the author in relation to developing nations and free culture.
Government 2.0 arrives in Ottawa! - Mike Kujawski’s blog offering “insights on government, association and non-profit marketing in the web 2.0 world”, discussing this year’s GTEC conference coming up in October. Shamless plug - I’m doing the keynote October 16th… this is going to be a great event.
Who has the reigns? - described as “Jessica’s weblog exploring interactive communications”, here she ties a series of book reviews (wikinomics, sociable media, wealth of networks) into her own personal experiences
This Wikinomics thing is really taking off - links to a discussion about the latest TechCrunch event, and is posted by Martin Hardee within the Sun.com blogs. If you do a search on this site, you may find a couple of posts I’ve done about other Sun employees who blog regularly… like the CEO.
Wiki Time - quoting the conclusion (author Tim McCall): Through Wikipedia and becoming a creator as opposed to always being a viewer was rewarding and helped me have a better understanding of how far Wikinomics can go.
Ashley Cheng Abstract - post by a student doing a class paper on wikis (particular focus on their use in relation to corporate transparency), tied to many of the wikinomics concepts.
Wikinomics and Small Business- An interesting small business focused blog entry detailing how a New Haven soda maker is using the web to expand their market.
Emergent Business Networks - The Real Enterprise 2.0 Story - a new blogger’s take on the key elements of the platform, and what markets it will happen in.
Ramblings of a Graduate Student - (quote): How will the elite of the future be identified and offered a $400,000.00 chance at an Ivy League education? If wikinomics, to borrow the term from the Tapscott and Williams article, is really the new way in which people are to participate in the economy, why shouldn’t the idea that universities will make their databases open to the public be considered?
I work with strangers - commentary on the Web 2.0, mediated vs. non-mediated communications, new business and productions models, etc.
Mass collaboration : book vs. street vs. process - a commentary in relation to the types of learning and what is better for society.
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September 27th, 2007, 11:19am
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The iPhone is no doubt the must have gadget of the year, one of those rare products that manage to live up to the pre-launch hype (Halo 3 being another mega success example, although the game was a hit before its release with over a million pre-ordered copies). The thing is that success has come in spite of Apple and AT&T teaming up to release what may be the most un-consumer friendly product ever (we are not talking interface here).
When you buy an iPhone you are told to play by Apple’s rules
- You must use it on AT&T (ok, that’s reasonable, carrier subsidies etc…)
- You cannot add any programs to the phone (a little odd, it’s a smartphone, as a user can I not make it smarter?)
- You cannot even turn on the phone and use all the iPod and video screen goodness until its activated (Really, what is the point of that, and yes this may turn into a rant)
- If you pay Apple a dollar for a song from iTunes you can’t use that as your ringtone. Yes, that’s right you must pay another dollar to download the music you already own and paid for in ringtone format (This part just made people angry and was a pure cash grab)
After all the rules and limitations Apple slammed on its new products what does the company do to its loyal earlier adopter customers. It slashes the price of the iPhone 33% less than three months after it was introduced. If that wasn’t enough, Jobs is now pledging to turn all ‘hacked’ iPhones into bricks with the next firmware update for the iPhone. Stating that unlocks that have been applied “will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed” (Does Apple remember the trouble Sony got into with the whole DRM/spyware issue, this sounds is 10 times more malicious)
I understand that Apple has to try and save face with AT&T and try to look like they are protecting the exclusive agreement, but is wrecking customers phones the best option? The ironic thing is that in most of cases these are customers who can’t even be serviced by AT&T if the wanted to as the live in other parts of the world. They are die hard Apple junkies who feel the ‘need’ to have the latest Apple products. Compound that with the fact that over 500,000 copies of the unlock program have been download, you are looking at almost half of all iPhone users owning a $500 brick.
The real problem for Apple however is they just don’t get it, I think we need to send Steve a copy of Wikinomics. The iPhone hack was created by a collaborative community of hackers (the iPhone Dev Team) operating on IRC channels and wikis. Jobs has now thrown down the gauntlet, stating that “It’s a cat-and-mouse game. We try to stay ahead. People will try to break in, and it’s our job to stop them breaking in.” It has turned into Apple vs. the collective intelligence of the world. HD DVD was cracked in a matter of days, IBM and other software giants have bowed to Linux (remember that Open Source collaborative OS) so why is it that Apple is trying to fight the community head on?
A spokesman of the iPhone Dev Team responded by saying that “We will provide you with a tool in the next week which will be able to recover your ‘nck’ counter and ’seczones’ and even enable you to restore your phone to a factory-like state if you are really [determined] to update your phone”. Game on Steve Jobs, and good luck. I would love to see Vegas put odds on this, you just know Apple would be a long shot to win.
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September 26th, 2007, 06:19pm
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According to an article from Yahoo, University of Ottawa’s Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) conducted a study and concluded that digital rights management (DRM) technology may be violating Canadian privacy laws as outlined by the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). I promise you there will be no more acronyms.
The violation allegedly occurs when companies using DRM within their products (i.e. DRM protected music) fail to disclose in their privacy policies the personal information the vendor collects and embeds for DRM purposes.
“If there’s personal information collection use or disclosure going on, there has to be consent and the form of consent has to be appropriate to the circumstances,” Fewer said.
“We agree that in many cases consent doesn’t have to come in the form of expressed consent. But, in other circumstances, particularly where it was unexpected or whether what was being collected was related to core biographical data, we would have thought you would need to see expressed consent.”
The article goes on to mention that the main concern comes from a privacy policy’s lack of disclosure regarding the third-party companies and marketers found linked with the DRM systems and where your information is used. They use Intuit’s QuickTax as an example.
“It wasn’t the use of QuickTax itself that triggered the concern, but rather the use of Intuit’s online filing service where we found buried in one of the disclosures the notice that, as an international corporation, Intuit would send information across the border,” Fewer said.
“Now if you’re Canadian and are concerned about your financial data going to the U.S. where it might be vulnerable to the Patriot Act, you may want to know that kind of information up front,” he added.
Another major piece of the study looks at IP addresses and how it is collected, used and disclosed. Currently under Canadian laws, IP addresses aren’t regarded as ‘personal information’ so it may be communicated freely.
However contradictorily, certain Canadian courts along with the Privacy Commissioner have released decisions where the IP address has been interpreted as personal information. It isn’t just government who is taking camp on both sides of the argument, but big companies as well. For example, Sony BMG, who have said that IP addresses are not personal information, happily sue people in file sharing lawsuits on the basis of IP addresses and linking them to activities. The IP address argument is one that involves many nations and is continually debated.
Copyright and privacy laws in Canada have always been slightly differing from those of the United States, proving to be tricky for many corporations to operate in both environments with the same policies. A good example of this was Canada’s levy on blank media that was suspected to be used to record copyright material (yes, that’s right, they assumed we were all guilty and charged us for it). At first it included MP3 players, adoringly labeled the ‘iPod tax’ - roughly equating to $1CDN per GB of storage. The Canadian Federal Court of Appeal eventually ruled that it was unlawful to include MP3 players as blank media and Apple reimbursed their customers.
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September 26th, 2007, 04:56pm
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I came across an interesting blog post from the Read/WriteWeb on 10 future web trends. The interesting thing is that the 10 future web trends post was created almost exclusively from user generated content in the form of comments on their original post.
A lot of the ideas posted on the blog are extensions of topics talked about in Wikinomics and most of them are plausible, if not probable. Ideas such as using geospatial data to enhance your physical surroundings and the integration of everyday devices in what they describes as a “device pervasiveness” is likely to happen more widespread within the next few years.
Some of the predicted trends may be a bit optimistic such as having one open internet identity or a bit too futuristic such as blog posts being directly downloaded into your brain.
5. User-controlled, open Internet Identity; Thomas Huhn pointed out that “forming your online identity, controlling what personal data you give to whom and aggregating all your and your environments lifestreams in an open social network is simply essential for the further development of the web.” We’re seeing this develop now (it’s sometimes referred to as, you guessed it, Identity 2.0), but the scenario Thomas described is 5+ years into the future.
Regardless of the optimism and somewhat far-fetched ideas, it is still an interesting read.
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September 26th, 2007, 02:39pm
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New Zealand police has created a new wiki to get insights from the public for a new Policing Act which will be presented to the country’s parliament. The wiki is available for anyone to edit and is part of an ongoing public review of proposed changes to the act. Hamish McCardle, the superintendent in charge, describes the goal, “launching a wiki version of a statute is a novel move, but one we hope will yeild a range of views from people interested in having a direct say on the shape of a new Policing Act.”
Another wiki, run by the State Services Commission, has been in operation since the beginning of 2007. The ParticipatioNZ wiki, as it is known, has been accesses by thousands of people with hundreds of changes and additions made to the pages. Although the effectiveness of these tools for policymaking is yet uncertain, experiments such as those in New Zealand should go a long way in teaching governments how to become more open and collaborative.
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September 26th, 2007, 11:34am
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From an article on bbc news.
Burmese bloggers based around the world are using contacts inside Burmese borders to relay information, images and video (from cell phones).
With the help of the Internet, and computer savvy users, the dissemination of information regarding protests against the military government to the world, has become somewhat easier.
From the article:
CENSORSHIP IN BURMA
Burma ranks 164 of 168 states on press freedom
0.56% of population has internet access
25,000 people have official email addresses (2005)
Two state-controlled internet providers
“Pervasive” filtering of political websites
Sources: Reporters Without Borders, OpenNet Initiative
With Internet access at less than 1%, the impact of the Internet and the ability to get information to the outside world is still undeniable. The Net Generation in Burma, no matter how few, are using their skills to make a difference. They are by-passing the censorship and are being taught by bloggers and activists from the outside world to use foreign-hosted proxy sites – allowing them to view blocked sites. The government is well aware of the threat imposed by bloggers and are doing all they can to repress the movement and censor information. Users must register their computer with one of two state sanctioned and controlled Internet providers, otherwise they face a 15-year jail term.
The Internet has allowed the world to see into the closed gates where Burmese citizens are living and struggling. Recent protests have risen due to the government’s announcement to double the price of fuel.
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September 26th, 2007, 10:04am
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Meet Charlie – What is Enterprise 2.0 is a great presentation available through slideshare.net that gives a visual explanation of just what Enterprise 2.0 is. It was created by Scott Gavin a blogger and Enterprise 2.0 evangelist (also the name of his blog) who has worked with Pfizer on getting the tools up and running in the organization. Charlie is a figure used in the presentation, and he embodies how prototypical young employees working at organizations across the globe ideally would like to be doing their job.
The presentation gives you an interesting walkthrough of how Charlie goes about doing his job with the aid of Web 2.0 technology. It is a great way to share with fellow employees or even superiors who you are trying to explain the benefit of these new technologies.
By the end you should realize that Enterprise 2.0 isn’t just about flashy new technology, it’s about collaboration. Enterprise 2.0 is a set of collaborative tools that will be beneficial to everyone in the organization, not just the Net Generation. In the words of Charlie “social networking is not just for kids” (referring of course to Linkedin).
View the Meet Charlie Presentation
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September 26th, 2007, 07:27am
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So the general story, in many people’s eyes, is supposed to go like this - music companies are bad, and Apple is good, because Apple has not only embraced digital music sales, Steve Jobs has said he’d fully support DRM free music. More specifically, Steve’s Thoughts on Music web letter from February 6th 2007 said:
Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.
How nice of Apple to think this way, and support an open, interoperable marketplace. But now let’s look at what Apple’s saying about what’s going to happen to people (or more specifically, to people’s iPhones) that have been unlocked to use a variety of different software programs (can you say interoperable?):
Apple has discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed.
Um, right - the unlocking programs cause irreparable damage, which will be revealed at the exact moment when future Apple-supplied software updates are installed. Doesn’t that sound a little like Apple-supplied software will disable the phones of anyone that dared unlock it? Did they get interoperable and inoperable confused, or what’s going on here?
Well, to quote Steve Jobs on this issue:
It’s a constant cat and mouse game. We try to stay ahead. People will try to break in, and it’s our job to stop them breaking in.
Huh. Alternatively, of course, Apple’s job could be to make amazing electronics and embrace an open developer community to further enhance their products and experiences. Or maybe turn the iPhone into a platform. There’s lots and lots of alternative “jobs” that Apple can be doing that don’t involve sabotaging products customers bought from them.
I’ve been waiting for a backlash on Apple for some time - they seem to have quite the ability to walk many thin lines at once, and rarely get called on actions that companies like Microsoft would get hung out to dry on. I wonder if intentionally disabling phones of a huge group of fanatical customers might finally do it?
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September 24th, 2007, 01:26pm
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Pudding Media, a new start-up, is making headlines with technology to target ads based on people’s phone conversations. In return, users can make free VoIP calls through the company’s website. The company’s voice recognition software picks out key words and displays contextual ads on the screen during the conversation.
To dispel any invasion of privacy fears Pudding Media is quick to point to their policy of not recording any calls and only delivering ads during the conversation itself. The service is also targeted at young people who are more comfortable with releasing their personal information in return for valuable services.
Pudding Media’s foray into voice based advertising is a continuation of a trend to make ads more relevant to users. Google was the first by introducing ads linked to key words contained in email messages. With audiences, especially young ones, time shifting through TV commercials and turning towards the internet for entertainment, companies are looking for new ways of getting their attention. Providing free calls along with useful and relevant advertising should prove to be an effective way to do that. For advertisers the pay-per-click model devised by Pudding Media ensures that their marketing dollars are also well spent.
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September 24th, 2007, 11:12am
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We’ve written a couple of times about friend of New Paradigm’s Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop project (see here and here), and while most of us are effusive in our praise of the program, I for one am rather ambivalent about it.
It’s not that it’s not a great initiative; its potential for improving access to educational materials and the Net is great. But in the context of developing countries, and in particular the least-developed countries, there are much more immediate needs. So when I read this article on the BBC about the project I couldn’t help but think “no kidding.” In it, Negroponte notes, “I have to some degree underestimated the difference between shaking the hand of a head of state and having a cheque written…And yes, it has been a disappointment.”
But herein lies the disconnect between what we’ve hyped as technological solutions to under-development and reality. While this project stands to create substantial long-term benefits for future generations, it doesn’t put food on the table, power in street lights, or create jobs in the short-term. A good friend of mine, and former colleague at TakingITGlobal, likes to tout the “information as power” argument with respect to projects such as this but I’m a structural power guy at heart and thus am more in tune with the “money as power” thinking behind projects such as Kiva.org or Global Giving.
Question is whether any of these projects will work at a broader macro level – thoughts?
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September 21st, 2007, 04:56pm
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Net Generation research suggests that my demographic should naturally gravitate towards online tools; spending countless hours a week on Facebook, creating avatars in SecondLife, playing massive multiplayer online games (MMOL), and generally embracing Web 2.0 technologies. However, as with most categorizations, there are always the exceptions. I find this particularly true of those on the far edge of the age band, specifically those, like me, now in their late twenties (i.e. born between 1977 and 1980). Maybe we’re just getting older, but I’m having a harder time identifying with some of the younger NGeners.
Moreover, I would say that a significant percentage of us have little or no interest in Web 2.0 technology. A good 40% to 50% of my friends (I’m talking about the real ones, not the Facebook variety) don’t use IM, shun social networking sites, aren’t avid bloggers, and continue to use the telephone as their primary means of communication. Sure, we all use e-mail too, but even that’s a bit backwards; nowadays we’re being told “e-mail is dead.”
Maybe it’s because we’re just old enough to remember “the good old days” when cable TV was a luxury in many households, you had to ride your bike to the video store to rent a VHS movie, and a social network was just the kids on your block. A client recently told me his younger son plays upwards of 40 hours of World of Warcraft per week – a full-time job by most accounts. Contrast that with parents of kids in the late 80s that would flat out deny us from having video game consoles in the house (mine finally caved in the mid-90s when my younger brother threw a tantrum to get a Super NES).
Or, maybe we’re just bitter because we missed the party. Sandwiched uncomfortably between GenX and the NGen, we feel somewhat disenfranchised. We have legacy skills like knowing how to program a VCR, but we lack some of the advanced skills of the younger portion of our generation. Though we use technology, we often lack the patience to optimize it (could someone please set me up on BitTorrent so I can download movies more effectively).
We’re also a small demographic (in North America anyways). According to date from the US National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), fewer children were born between 1971 and 1980 than any other ten-year period since the ‘40s. Naturally, we command less attention from advertisers and are generally lumped in with the gadget-loving, plugged-in teenagers and early twenty-somethings that characterize the broader group.
Yet another possible explanation is that as you get older, you naturally gravitate towards real experiences and less superficial, technology-driven interactions. It’s certainly too early to tell, but will the rest of the NGen also lose their affinity for gaming and social networking as they get older? The tools certainly won’t go away, but maybe how we use them as we mature becomes more restrained.
Whatever the reason may be, it’s certainly clear to me that us late tech bloomers are a bit more cynical about Internet technology (and the world) than the rest of “our generation.” So we’re still technically the NGen, but we’re on the edge, and we’re a little different.
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September 21st, 2007, 07:25am
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It was late in the afternoon, on a typically harsh Canadian winter day, as Rob McEwen, the CEO of Goldcorp Inc., stood at the head of the boardroom table confronting a room full of senior geologists. The news he was about to deliver was not good. In fact, it was disastrous, and McEwen was having a hard time shielding his frustrations.
This is how Chapter one of Wikinomics - The Art and Science of Peer Production - began. In what is truly a remarkable story, my friend and neighbor Rob was having no luck with his geologist team finding gold on a big tract of land they owned. Taking some time out for personal development, he wound up at an MIT conference for young presidents - and the subject of Linux and the open source development movement came up. Rob thought about that for a bit, and then quickly raced back to Toronto and announced:
I’d like to take all of our geology, all the data we have that goes back to 1948, and put it into a file and share it with the world. Then we’ll ask the world to tell us where we’re going to fund the next six million ounces of gold.
As the book (under) states, the geologists were a little skeptical - but they came around, and the rest is history. The contest Rob came up with to encourage responses was a rousing success, 80% of the 110 targets identified had substantial quantities of gold (50% of which hadn’t been previously identified), a $100 Million company turned into a $9 Billion, and my neighbor’s house got a lot bigger.
Time flies - that process started about eight years ago. But fast forward to September 19 2007, and what do you see? Established mining juggernaut Barrick Gold doing a very, very similar thing - but on a very different scale. The winners of the GoldCorp challenge had the chance to get several hundred thousand dollars, while the winners of this contest are looking at $10 Million.
So why are they doing it? To quote Barrick President and CEO Gregory Wilkins, “This is a way to go out to the global scientific community to focus that intellectual horsepower. Rather than limit the problem to a very small R.& D. staff, we have turned our R.& D. group into managers of research.”
No wonder - the challenge they are posting is quite difficult, as they need to improve on a silver extraction process that recovers only 6.7% of the ore, versus 80% for gold (while causing rather large environmental issues on occasion). And as University of Toronto professor William Bawden notes:
“Silica is a pretty tough material. If you’re going to attack this, you’re going to need to pull together different groups of people who probably had nothing to do with mining before.”
It all sounds fairly familiar to anyone that’s read wikinomics, no?
What Rob did all those years ago was attack the fundamental assumption that you simply don’t give away proprietary data - in fact, in that industry, you kept it under lock and key surrounded by guard dogs and a relatively large moat. That idea was so well established, no one ever challenged it. That didn’t mean it was necessarily right - and Rob proved that.
While it’s taken some time, Barrick Gold is now doing the exact same thing on a bigger scale (see www.unlockthevalue.com). But a mining company replicating what another mining company did successfully is relatively easy - the bigger question for us is what other industries could learn from what’s happening in the mining industry, and what other fundamental notions could, and should be challenged in the age of wikinomics.
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September 20th, 2007, 11:45am
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As a testament to how fast the Internet really moves… with the hype surrounding the Web 2.0, the Canadian Business magazine has already started talking about “what’s next”; and apparently it’s the advent of the Web 3.0. The article highlights a young Canadian entrepreneur – Albert Lai, 28 years old – and his views on the days to come (as well as a new project he’s working on).
A quick Google search for the Web 3.0 will pull up an impressive list of articles and blog posts where people have already started to discuss the rise of the Web 3.0 - the specific definition is still to be determined. A previous blog on our site, written by Denis Hancock gives us a pretty coherent definition from Eric Schmidt. To be fair, I think there is still a lot of work to be done regarding the Web 2.0 and getting the average person’s head wrapped around that idea. The older generation is still trying to understand exactly what facebook is… but isn’t this just the pace of the Internet age.
To Lai, the Web 3.0 will be bridging the gap between the internet and hardware devices or even household items such as your central AC and refrigerator - “it’s evolving to the point where the sorts of things we used to joke about are actually more practical” says Lai. With technology continuing to develop and improve at warp speed, Lai predicts that our current mobile products such as Blackberrys, the iPhone and all smart phone technology will soon be able to perform applications like on a desktop, opening the door to many new types of innovative, more complex applications to be used from our mobile devices.
Looks like we’ve all got a lot of catching up to do… step aside Web 2.0 – Web 3.0’s coming through.
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September 20th, 2007, 10:55am
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PlaySpan Inc. just finished raising its first round of venture capital, led by New York based Easton Capital along with Menlo Ventures, South Korea-based STIC International and Hong Kong-based Novel TMT Ventures. They were able to successfully raise $6.5 million.
PlaySpan’s business model is based on selling virtual goods from within virtual worlds and have signed up seven MMOG publishers to access a potential customer base of 10 million MMOG users. According to PlaySpan, in-game transactions have just surpassed the $2 billion mark, and their upcoming product well help facilitate more of these micro-transactions.
Oh and the best part of this story is that the founder of PlaySpan Inc. is in the 6th grade.
PlaySpan is founded by Arjun Mehta, a 6th grader, passionate about gaming and software programming that can make game playing experience exciting and more importantly rewarding!
PlaySpan started in Arjun’s garage in Silicon Valley in 2006 and was incorporated with Arjun’s earnings from selling online game items won from quests he fought while attending 5th grade at Challenger School in San Jose.
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September 19th, 2007, 06:22pm
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Flipping through my latest issue of The Economist I stumbled upon an advertisement entitled Chevron Presents: Energyville… An energy game developed by The Economist Group. The advertisement concluded with Play it. Power it. Discuss it. Intrigued, I popped on over the website hosting the game - www.willyoujoinus.com.
This looks to be an interesting experiment, as the website greets you with a running tally of the global oil and gas consumption that has occured since you reached the site (while admittedly I’m typing slowly and had some trouble with the link for some reason, I just crossed the 680,000 barrel mark while typing this sentence). From there, you are invited to play the game and/or join the discussion.
Being all discussed-out for the day, I’ve decided to play the game - Deniville has been launched, and now I’ve got to go sort out the portfolio of energy sources I’m going to use, and keep my little utopia churning through 2030, while every little decision will have an economic impact, environmental impact, and security one as well.
Will I find the magic solution to all the world’s energy problems by myself? Probably not, but if enough people play and discuss what they’ve learned with each other maybe, just maybe, we’ll all make a little more headway on this front. To quote the ad again:
After you play, share your results and challenge others. Because only whe
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