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March 30, 2003

Time for some VONage

I'm off to San Jose for Jeff Pulver's VON conference, and the usual Bay Area side trips.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Jamie Lewis on Digital ID

Jamie Lewis of the Burton Group has posted Ends and Means: Identity in Two Worlds, an outstanding overview of the digital identity situation. (via "Doc Searls")

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 28, 2003

Distortions with statistics

AP: "Free peer-to-peer music file-sharing has become larger than the multibillion-dollar recording industry, with a growth trend that has become 'fundamentally unstoppable,' a [California] state Senate committee exploring Internet piracy has been warned."

I can't even imagine what this statistic is supposed to mean. Clearly, P2P file sharing isn't bigger in revenues than the recording industry. I can't believe it's bigger in number of users, since at least a third of Americans don't even have Internet connections. Maybe they are saying more songs are downloaded than bought, though even that's pretty questionable.

And what's the point of this scary-sounding claim? It's like saying free hard drive backups are bigger than the paid market for backup utilities, ever since Microsoft included a backup function in Windows. And backup utilities used to be a thriving market! No, it's more silly than that. Unless record sales have dropped >50%, it's an admission that P2P file trading expands the market.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 5:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Trigger Happy TV

Latest Tivo fave: Trigger Happy TV, a British program broadcast here on Comedy Central. A smarter Candid Camera. The segments are hit-or-miss, but they are short. Each episode has at least one or two huge laughs.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 2:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 27, 2003

Boom


Supernova 2003 will be held July 8-9 in the Washington, DC area. If you're reading this blog, you probably caught some of the buzz from Supernova 2002 in December. The 2003 event promises to be even better. Already, our confirmed speaker list includes:


* Reed Hundt (former FCC Chairman)

* Jonathan Schwartz (EVP of Software, Sun Microsystems)

* Joichi Ito (CEO, Neoteny Co. Ltd., Japan)

* Kevin Lynch (Chief Software Architect, Macromedia)

* Bruce Mehlman (Asst. Secretary of Commerce for Tech Policy)

* Craig Donato (CEO, Grand Central Networks)

* Clay Shirky (author and consultant)


We're holding this one in DC, the belly of the beast, to bring together the technology, business, and government communities. Such conversations are increasingly important as legal and policy issues ripple through the tech world.


I hope you can join us in July. Registration materials will be available in the next few weeks.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Greetings from Kevin Werbach!

Greetings from Kevin Werbach!

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 1:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 26, 2003

Great to see the Pulver.com

Great to see the Pulver.com folks (my partners for "Supernova") have gotten blog religion!

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Google's non-IPO

You know people are desperate for positive tech stories when Sergey Brin's joke about a potential Google IPO is big news.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 25, 2003

You know you're busy when...

62 outgoing emails today. Anything over 50 usually means I'm busy. And that generally means no time to blog. More about what's keeping me busy soon!

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 24, 2003

Better Webmail?

MailBlocks is a new Web-based email service from Phil Goldman, one of the founders of WebTV. It's slickly done, with a significantly better user experience than Yahoo! or Hotmail. Unlike Oddpost, it doesn't require Internet Explorer, though there are still bugs in support for other browsers.

Goldman wants to do to Web-based email what Google did to search. Mailblocks focuses on core functionality and performance, rather than blasting users with ads. The price, $9.95 per year, is reasonable for what Mailblocks delivers.

Most of the coverage of MailBlocks focuses on its anti-spam features. Mailblocks uses a challenge-response mechanism (what I'd call a whitelist). In the past, I've predicted that most active email users would switch to whitelists to avoid spam.

Goldman has done two things to make whitelists widespread. He's spent several months tweaking his system to make it easy and reliable. And he's purchased several patents that he believes give him ownership of the fundamental IP around the mechanism. There are several other whitelist applications and services available today, though none has set the world on fire. We'll see whether MailBlocks' patents help or hinder adoption.

As for me, I'm quite interested in trying Mailblocks, since I get over 600 spams per day. Unfortunately, the feature to allow you to import existing contacts into your whitelist doesn't appear to be working yet. I don't want to make the 2000 people in my address book go through the challenge process. I think others will feel the same.

If MailBlocks delivers on its promise, it could be a big success. Webmail is a big application that none of the existing providers is really focused on, much like search when Google came on the scene. Ten million users paying $9.95/year doesn't seem unrealistic in a couple years. However, the company needs to smooth out some rough edges. If you want to build a killer app, little things matter a lot.


UPDATE: Declan McCullagh forwards some worrisome terms in the MailBlocks terms of service. They reserve the right to send direct or third-party commercial messages to their users, with no opt-out. This is problematic for a service that promotes itself as a spam killer.

UPDATE #2: Apparently Mailblocks had an old version of its terms of service on the Website. The updated version, which is there now, is reportedly somewhat better.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The first broadband war

New York Times: "[T]he number of people using elaborate multimedia programming online surged to 5 to 10 times typical levels at many news sites."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 23, 2003

Rest in P.C.

I just found out that Sam Albert, one of the nicest people in the computer industry, passed away. For younger folks like me, Sam was a treasure trove. He worked at IBM for 30 years, and stayed active in the industry for many years after his "retirement." We'll miss you, Sam.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 5:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Popfile Update #5

I've now been using Popfile's Bayesian spam filter for more than a month. Accuracy has leveled off at about 95%, training on over 10,000 messages. The biggest shift in the last couple weeks is that most of the errors are now false negatives (missed spam), instead of good email filtered out. I haven't had a false positive in a few days, which makes me think Popfile might be a worthwhile long-term solution. Dealing with a few spams that make it through is much easier than having to scrutinize the Popfile list every day for false positives.

The one other negative of Popfile is that its proxy, along with Radio Userland, frequently slow my machine to a crawl. I'm hoping the new Centrino-based laptop I have on order will alleviate this.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Forumless

For the first time in six years, I'm not at PC Forum, EDventure Holdings' annual conference. The good news (for me) is that there are numerous people there blogging. I'll look forward to hearing how it goes from the outside!

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 22, 2003

Google for a social network mapping

TouchGraph GoogleBrowser maps the relationships around any URL, using the Google API. (via Slashdot)

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 21, 2003

Sonic Blues

Reuters: "Consumer electronics maker Sonicblue Inc. said on Friday it plans to file for bankruptcy and that it agreed to sell the assets of its main product lines for $52.5 million."

Not surprising, but a shame. They made some excellent products, and stuck their necks out in ways competitors didn't. That no doubt contributed to the company's downfall.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 2:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bush

Why is the war called "Operation Iraqi Freedom?" Because the administration wants to emphasize the political point that it has no territorial ambitions in Iraq. Surely President Bush and his advisors wish to see the Iraqi people liberated from oppression. But that has never been the prime justification for this war. Many other countries suffer under equal or greater oppresison. During the Presidential campaign, George Bush criticized the Clinton/Gore administration for "nation building" and intervening for humanitarian reasons in areas such as the former Yugoslavia.

President Bush and his spin doctors believe they can convince listeners through rote repetition of a theme, no matter how transparently false. It's 1984 Newspeak, plain and simple. That's why, in his speech the other night, the President said, "my fellow citizens," and "God bless our country" rather than referring to America. He wants counter the widespread view that this is America's war, against the will of the world. Instead of engaging the opposition directly, he pretends there is none.

In the end, substance matters more than message. This administration has aliented the world by its actions, not its words. Better messaging isn't the answer. Yet that's where the administration puts its energy. It's why they sacked Paul O'Neill for not talking up the tax cut enough, and Larry Lindsey for giving what turned out to be accurate predictions about the cost of war in Iraq. In these and other cases, what they should have focused on is the product, not the sales pitch.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Half full

Jeremy Allaire: "I'm more optimistic about opportunities for innovation and growth than I was in the early 1990s when the commercial Internet entered its first generation."

I agree. For me, it's like walking into a beautifully decorated room, only to find, after a while, that the furniture you admired is actually somewhat tacky and cheap. But then you notice a door at the other end of the room. Opening it, you find a whole house to explore.

I remember thinking in early 1995 that the great Internet business opportunities had been occupied. I was spectacularly wrong. Yet that makes me more optimistic today. With the past decade of perspective, I can see now how much room for innovation remains. Recognizing how long it always takes for technological seachanges to reach their maturity, I know how much opportunity stretches in front of us.

By the way, that's one reason I'm so committed to spectrum policy reform. It's today's Marshall Plan, Manhattan Project, or ARPANet: a five-year exercise that could shape the environment for the next fifty years.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Salon readers critique David Reed

Salon readers critique David Reed and David Weinberger's arguments about spectrum scarcity. (Unpersuasively, methinks.)

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Blair

Listening to Tony Blair's address last night on the radio, my wife and I couldn't help but feel that the world would be a better place if his home were #1600 Pennsylvania rather than #10 Downing. Here at last was the case for war made honestly and persuasively. He was the essence of resolve, in contrast to Bush's arrogant certainty.

Like many I know, I've long harbored grave ambivalence about the looming war in Iraq. George Bush's conduct over the past six months pushed me into opposition. Tony Blair's words over some six minutes last night almost pulled me back.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 20, 2003

WiFi keeps on truckin'

"IBM and Rocksteady Networks will provide the infrastructure for Columbia Advanced Wireless (CAW) to offer high speed wireless Internet access at more than 1,000 truck stops throughout the country."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hard to concentrate...

...when there's a war going on. Especially when it's the first American war of the Internet era, with reports and pictures constantly streaming in from all angles. Do clouds of information lessen the fog of war, or increase it?

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Phoenix Center: The Broadband Loophole

Phoenix Center: The Broadband Loophole

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Clash of the titans

Internet News: Cisco Acquires Linksys for $500M

Ahh, the old days when WiFi was the domain of scrappy innovators like Apple, Wayport, and Linksys. It's now a prime battleground for the industry's titans -- Cisco, Intel, and Microsoft -- with Dell, IBM, and a gaggle of carriers on their way. I see Boingo, Proxim, Vivato and 2Wire next on the auction block.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Um, thanks

I just got an automated phone call from Comcast, telling me they have increased upstream speed on my cable modem service to 256kbps. This is a good thing. The service is still too asymmetric for my taste, but it's nice to see Comcast recognizing that subscribers want to email or serve large files.

What's with the automated call, though? I suppose they want to make sure everyone knows about the change, because you need to restart your router to update the settings. Why not just send an email? The robot phone message was creepy.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

War and Remembrance

Let us hope that the war in Iraq is successful, in every sense of the word.

There will be plenty of opportunities to consider what was right, and what was wrong. When the time is right, let us remember. We must give our President and political leadership a full accounting for their decisions. We must do the same for those at the anti-war rallies carrying anti-Israel signs, and those Palestinians who last night took to the streets to support Saddam Hussein. Everyone is responsible for his or her own actions.

But for now, let us simply pray for minimal loss of life, on the battlefield and elsewhere. The die has been cast.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 19, 2003

Demand is just a river in (oh, wait)...

Arnold Kling takes issue with my comment that Worldcom's collapse means Moore's Law has come to telecom. (On the other hand, Brad DeLong agrees with me, though he doesn't realize it.)

Arnold says Worldcom's problem was over-estimation of demand, not over-paying for supply. They built a network for 1000x annual traffic growth, but actual growth was 27x. What Arnold misses is that it would be the same network. The big capital expenditure was putting in the fiber and lighting it up. Worldcom had to do that even under the lower growth expectaitons. Swapping out faster gear is a relatively minor minor cost component, because (and here's the punch line) networking gear follows Moore's Law in price/performance improvements.

When I say Moore's Law comes to telecom, here's what I mean. The IBM laptop I bought 3 years ago cost $3,000. (Actually, I got it for free, but that's neither here nor there.) Today, that model is available for $700 on eBay. That's about the same depreciation rate that WorldCom's network experienced. Here's the difference. The PC industry can sell me a new laptop today for $2,000 or more, because it has more horsepower to run today's demanding Microsoft software. Worldcom was stuck making only $700. A bit is a bit, after all. Brad's point about capacity increases is essentially the same. Moore's Law is why capacity can increase so dramatically.

The WorldCom demand hype tale is a good one, first thoroughly exposed by the ever-perceptive Andrew Odlyzko. It's a little too neat, though. It was John Sidgmore of UUNet, not Bernie Ebbers, who made the claim most voiciferously. And he got it from Mike O'Dell, UUNet's chief scientist. Mike was the guy actually doing network architecture planning. He knew what real demand curves were like, and what network investments cost. He made the 1000x growth statement back in 1995-1996, when even Odlyzko admits it was actually true. Sidgmore spent several more years spouting that number in speeches, and may have convinced Wall Street that his sow was a silk purse. But O'Dell was the one deciding what to put into the network.

Believe you me, Mike isn't a hype artist or bulshitter. When I interviewed him for Release 1.0 in 1998, he tore me a new one for not focusing more on traffic engineering. That means using smart routers to manage network traffic efficiently, in contrast to the "throw bandwidth at the problem" mentality that was common at the time.

Worldcom made more than its share of mistakes. (We're not even talking about the accounting fraud.) But the critical test they -- and most Net other infrastructure providers -- failed was their inability to cope with relentlessly declining costs.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A failure to communicate

Lawrence Lessig: "Most lawyers and policy makers do not understand what technologists believe; most technologists don’t understand that (at least some) lawyers believe that what technologists believe about the system should matter."

Larry is on to something here. The comment is about patents, but it applies more broadly.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Big names support grid computing

Grid Computing Planet:


"The seven companies have banded together to study the impact of Grid computing and Web services on enterprise performance, broadband use and U.S. economic growth.

The Economic Strategy Institute study will be led by: David Dorman, CEO of AT&T; Jim Morgan, CEO of Applied Materials; Jamie Houghton, CEO of Corning; Jay Tenenbaum, Chairman of CommerceNet; Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM's General Manager, e-business on demand; Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel; and Scott Kriens, CEO of Juniper Networks."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 1:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What I saw in New Orleans



I've posted some photos from the "CTIA 2003" wireless show.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 18, 2003

No time to blog today

No time to blog today -- maybe on the plane home tonight. Wireless is one of the few parts of telecom that is relatively upbeat, so the CTIA tradeshow I'm at has a pretty positive vibe.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 17, 2003

New Orleans or bust

[airport]

Waiting for my plane to New Orleans, where I'm moderating a panel at the CTIA wireless tradeshow. Taken, like the last two photos, with my wee Logitech Pocket Digital camera. With a little Photoshop cleanup, the results aren't bad, considering the size of the camera (and no flash).

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 2:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The vowlans are coming

Instat predicts the voice over wireless LAN market will grow from $16.5 million in 2002 to $507 million in 2007.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How long until this shows up in one of Jack Valenti's speeches?

BoingBoing: "'For example, not that we condone it,' says Ian, 'But it is now possible to reliably download entire TV shows and movies from Freenet, and we have made dramatic improvements to almost every aspect of the software.'"

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Why telcos are doomed, part 1

The Register: "New research from telecoms solutions provider CIT-PriMetrica suggests that nearly 50 per cent of US households would be prepared to switch from a wireline service to a family share wireless option with 600 shared base minutes offered at $50 per month."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The good guys in telecom

Research shop IDC thinks that Microsoft is shifting away from MSN as an ISP toward providing software and content on third-party broadband networks (see this New York Times article). If true, there are more significant consequences than MSN's competitive position vs. AOL.

A healthy broadband ecosystem would have companies competing at all layers -- physical connections, logical functions like identity and caching, services, and content. At the physical layer, the cable and phone companies are likely to dominate for at least next few years. Recent FCC decisions have reinforced that dominance. That wouldn't be such a bad thing if other companies could still compete at higher layers. Yet all communications infrastructure companies have long dreamt of vertical integration: leveraging their control of the pipes into applications and content.

Microsoft is the best possible counterweight to such vertical integration. Forget what you think about Microsoft in the operating system or PC application market. In telecom today, they are the good guys. Unlike AOL, they don't want to become an infrastructure provider themselves (with the fascinating exception of wireless). Consequently, Microsoft seems to be moving towards a strategy of competing aggressively at the logical and application layers, while equally aggressively pushing for neutrality at the physical layer.

Plenty of other companies and public interest groups support openness of broadband infrastructure. None of them has $40 billion in cash and software powering 90% of PCs.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

All your packets are belong to us

"VeriSign (Nasdaq: VRSN), the leading provider of digital trust
services, today unveiled its NetDiscovery(TM) service bureau solution for accomplishing lawful intercepts of packet data on GPRS and CDMA 1x wireless network technologies. VeriSign introduced NetDiscovery services for voice networks last year, offering a cost-efficient, turnkey solution for landline, wireless, and packet cable operators to meet federally-mandated obligations to provide lawfully authorized electronic surveillance of call content and call data to law enforcement agencies."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 16, 2003

"Feedster is a search engine

"Feedster is a search engine for what is called a 'RSS Feed'." (via "Scripting News")

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Towards structured blogging

Sebastien Paquet: "Lately I've been thinking about how we could evolve blogging tools to allow people to author more structured (dare I say semantic?) content, so that other people could find their stuff that they find of interest more easily."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Moore's Law comes to telecom.

New York Times: "WorldCom's hard assets, including its network, are now worth almost 75 percent less than what they had cost."

UPDATE: Scott Rafer's take on the same announcement. He thinks we're ascribing different causes to the writedown, but I think we agree. Worldcom's problem is that it didn't build its business (and capex plans) with Moore's Law in mind.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 15, 2003

Reminds me of Wired's Fetish section

Amazon.com now has an early adopter picks section.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New anti-spam group

"The vision of JamSpam participants is to produce an open, interoperable anti-spam specification that serves as a universal solution to both edges of the spam sword."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Quack!



It's still cold in Philly, but the Canadian geese are migrating back north. Here are a couple of them walking down my street this morning. I also saw a fox (I think) run through the back yard across the street last week. After spending ten years in dense urban environments, it's nice to come in contact with some wildlife.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Eli Noam's updated spectrum proposal

Eli Noam proposes what he calls a third way for spectrum -- dynamic user fees managed through software-defined radios. Unfortunately, though devices capable of implementing this plan will someday exist, though don't yet. It's not clear when they will, or, more importantly, whether the overhead in complexity such a system requires will be worth it. Still, Eli deserves great credit for articulating some of the basic ideas of open spectrum some ten years ago, before most of us were thinking about the issue.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 14, 2003

Powell on unlicensed

"I strongly back the unlicensed spectrum model as a key component of the Commission's overall spectrum and broadband policies."

-- FCC Chairman Michael Powell

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Steaming through Manhattan



When I emerged from a meeting at Rockefeller Center in New York yesterday, there were huge smoky jets of something spewing from the ground a block away, and a gaggle of fire trucks. This photo doesn't quite do the scene justice -- it was impressive. I heard later it was a steam leak from a pipe under the street.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Good job, guys

When Hylton Jolliffe first presented the idea of Corante to me a year ago, I was skeptical. I was wrong. The site has become something quite valuable: a happy medium between professional journalism and personal blogging. I just hope it works as a business. This and Nick Denton's string of sites are the poster children for blog-based nanopublishing.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The survivors (beta version)

In a network-centric world of relentless commoditization, there are only two ways to thrive for an extended period: Go small or go big. Small means building a defensible niche product that that doesn't threaten anyone. Apple represents the upper bound for this strategy. It can be a comfortable life, but your upside is limited.

The big option is really, really hard. Any competitive advantage and source of profits today could be someone else's free giveaway tomorrow. Just look at how Microsoft decimated Netscape. The only way to win is to develop a core asset that becomes a platform. As I wrote three years ago in the Harvard Business Review, that means providing that platform to others instead of holding it close to the vest.

So, who are likely to be the winners in converging worlds of communications and computing? I'm leaving out companies that primarily produce IT hardware (Cisco, Intel, Dell) or content (Disney, Vivendi, News Corp.).


I've left off several companies that I admire: Sun, AOL Time Warner, HP, Yahoo. I want to put them on the list, but I just can't make the argument today. They may have many years of life -- and good profits -- left in them. On their current strategic path, though, they are all fighting the arc of history... and the fearsome competitors on my list.

I welcome your comments. Who should be on the list? Who shouldn't? Just click on the "comments" link below this entry.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 13, 2003

Before I forget, David Weinberger's

Before I forget, David Weinberger's Salon piece based on his discussion with David Reed about open spectrum.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Rock and roll

Online from the concourse at Rockefeller Center in New York. I'm connected through the T-Mobile access point at Starbucks, but I also picked up an open signal called "Rockefeller." Couldn't get an IP address, though. I wonder what that is -- an internal network for the facility?

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 12, 2003

Low-fi reporting

Why do so many general press articles about WiFi feel the need to explain that it stands for "wireless fidelity." It does, but only because the association with hi-fi makes the name catchy. There's nothing special about the fidelity of a WiFi signal. CNN doesn't feel the need to point out that DVD stands for digital versatile disc whenever they discuss a movie release, or that DirecTV satelite service stands for direct television, do they?

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

NewsFactor: IPWireless Offers 3G Alternative

NewsFactor: IPWireless Offers 3G Alternative

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 2:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

E-commerce lessons?

Dealtime buys Epinions. Google buys Blogger. Overture buys AltaVista and FAST. All in the last month or so. There's got to be a pattern here somewhere.

This isn't the answer, but one thing these deals suggest is that Jeff Bezos is really smart. Amazon bought cool technology to enhance a generic e-commerce transaction experience (Junglee, PlanetAll, Alexa). The acquisitions listed above are similar... but four years later.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Worrisome thought

What if the first world leader overthrown by the Bush administration's Iraq policy is not Saddam Hussein but Tony Blair?

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 11, 2003

The Two Valleys

Happy trails, Dave! See you on the other end of the long, strange, cross-country trip.

Funny. I'm seeing something of a reinvigoration of Silicon Valley (as Joi notes), at the same time as many people I know are leaving it to head east. It's not, as the California folks sometimes arrogantly say, that the carpet-baggers are going away, leaving the Valley to the real entrepreneurs. The carpet-bagger types are still there, just without jobs. People like Dave Winer, Jason Kottke, and Meg Hourihan are the very essence of the Bay Area tech boom... and they're the ones going east.

What's happening, I think, is that the two Silicon Valleys are dividing. The Bay Area was a uniquely fertile place to be during the boom, in a way that masked its many problems (which the boom also exacerbated). People noticing those problems and looking for new challenges are leaving. They are the trailblazer types, who got to the Bay Area ahead of the boom and are looking to catch the early upswing elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Silicon Valley continues to do what it does well. It's the greatest concentration of tech talent and networking in the world. With the bubble-era volume turned down, it's easier to get real work done there. Work that doesn't depend on hype waves and spectacular IPOs. That's what people like Kim Polese are talking about when they say the buzz is back. I felt it myself at "Supernova" in December.

Life isn't a zero-sum game. The Valley can lose people and grow stronger, even as the expatriots thrive in their new locales. As for myself, I'd rather be in Philadelphia.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 10, 2003

The Net's Tectonic Shift

On Alexa's list of the Top 500 Sites on the Web, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google are in the top 5. That's not surprising. But sites #3 and #4 are, at least to me. They are two South Korean portals. In all, 11 of the top 20 sites on the Alexa list are Asian, dominated by Korea.

I knew Korea had the world's highest penetration rates for broadband and mobile phones, but hadn't realized how much usage patterns have shifted as a result. After all, this is a country with less than one-fifth the population of the US. Something major is happening when the usage disparity is that great.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 2:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Windows and Mac go their separate ways?

This exchange on Dan Gillmor's blog (via "Scripting News") about why great tools like Oddpost don't have Mac versions, got me thinking. It cuts both ways. My primary machine right now runs Windows, which means I can't use great software like NoteTaker, NetNewsWire, and EtherPEG. The Windows-only tools I like often aren't really about Windows. They are tied to Microsoft's Internet Explorer engine or Outlook's email client, neither of which I want to use. Anyway, with Apple's resurgence, it seems the two platforms are diverging more rather than less.

All of which makes my decision about what machine to buy next more difficult. I know it's either a 12 inch Powerbook or an IBM Thinkpad T series.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Next Explosion

Following on the heals of the successful December event, I'm hard at work on Supernova 2003, which will be July 8-9 in the Washington, DC area.

It's going to be even better than the last one. Already, the speaker roster includes a former FCC Chairman, top executives of companies like Sun and Macromedia, the Bush Administration's point person on tech policy, and one of Japan's most successful Internet entrepreneurs.

Small enough for intense discussion and networking, big enough to attract a broad range of industry leaders and visionaries, Supernova is the year's most dynamic technology conference. This time, we're offering a limited number of sponsorship and exhibitor slots -- see http://www.pulver.com/supernova/ for details. If you're reading this blog, I hope you'll consider coming.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The content industry bows to the inevitable

New York Times: "A secretive team of AOL Time Warner executives has begun talking with other major cable operators and media companies about speeding up and co-opting the potential revolution that TiVo kicked off."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Clay on Social Software and the Politics of Groups

Clay Shirky: "[S]ocial software is unique to the internet in a way that software for broadcast or personal communications are not."

Is Clay on a roll or what?

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 9, 2003

I've added a fourth photo

I've added a fourth photo album with pictures of Eli from January, February, and early March 2003.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 7, 2003

Joi Ito provides an annotated

Joi Ito provides an annotated photo of my panel at the spectrum conference.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Michael Gartenberg: "If I were

Michael Gartenberg: "If I were remaking The Graduate today, with Dustin Hoffman's character as an IT professional who was looking to advance his career, the one word of advice I would give him would be: weblogs."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Yahoo! News: Japan's Megapixel Phones

Yahoo! News: Japan's Megapixel Phones Eye Digital Cameras' Turf

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

World of Ends is the

World of Ends is the latest broadside from Doc Searls and David Weinberger. As usual, they bring insight to important issues. This one pulls together various threads about why and how the Internet works, and what that should teach us.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Why blogging isn't a fad

Arnold Kling offers one of the best explanations I've seen of the value of blogging as a distributed information filtering mechanism.

"This filtering process makes all of us more efficient. Information with low value does not travel far. Information with high general value tends to travel the farthest. Information with low general value but high local value tends to reach interested people but then die out because as it gets passed along its value decays below the threshold. Everyone tends to receive information with a high value to them, and they avoid having to read information that has low value to them."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Russell Beattie comments on Mitsubishi's

Russell Beattie comments on Mitsubishi's Moteran wireless mesh networking technology

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wired News: Cities Deliver Broadband

Wired News: Cities Deliver Broadband for Less

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wireless NewsFactor: Motorola Unveils 'Connected

Wireless NewsFactor: Motorola Unveils 'Connected Home' Vision

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Switzerland of WiFi hotspot aggregators

The Register: "Swisscom has already launched wireless hot spot services in Switzerland through its subsidiary Swisscom Mobile AG, and plans to use the acquisitions to roll out a pan-European WLAN Service."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mizuko Ito: A New Set

Mizuko Ito: A New Set of Social Rules for a Newly Wireless Society

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 6, 2003

Did I say that?

"Doc" has kindly transcribed my comments at the spectrum conference

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Register: "Internet battle lines

The Register: "Internet battle lines were drawn at an extraordinary meeting in Geneva this week."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 5, 2003

Federal Computer Week: "The General

Federal Computer Week: "The General Services Administration and the Defense Department's Defense Manpower Data Center have joined the Liberty Alliance Project, a consortium of more than 160 organizations and companies developing standards for electronically managing identity information."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Seattle Wireless launches national community

Seattle Wireless launches national community WiFi roaming. UPDATE: I assumed this was a press release from SeattleWireless.net, the excellent community WiFi group, but it's actually from www.seattlewireless.com. It appears to be a misleading effort to get people to pay for access to free networks.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 5:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

That's a lot of processed meat!

This week, AOL blocked over one billion spams in a single day.

Michael Sippey's calculations provide some perspective on this number.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 1:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Anyone out there in the UK?

If anyone reading this attends the meshed wireless seminar in England later this month, please let me know how it went.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tim Bray on spam: "I

Tim Bray on spam: "I think we may be winning." (I'm not so sure.)

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Jason Kottke: "Google is not

Jason Kottke: "Google is not a search company."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kevin Lynch: "There's still a

Kevin Lynch: "There's still a lot to learn about how technology can assist meetings, particularly distributed meetings."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 4, 2003

Now that's talking!

A British provider plans 30,000 WiFi hotspots by the end of the year. The company's main business -- gaming (aka gambling) machines. Guess they won't be coming to the US any time soon.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Now that's talking!

A British provider plans 30,000 WiFi hotspots by the end of the year. The company's main business -- gaming (aka gambling) machines. Guess they won't be coming to the US anyt time soon.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Paper by grid computing guru

Paper by grid computing guru Ian Foster and a co-author on convergence of grids and P2P. (via "Slashdot")

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

ISP Planet: Time Warner Cable

ISP Planet: Time Warner Cable partners with unlicensed fixed wireless provider SkyRiver.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

When did that happen?

News.com: "Former Chief Technology Officer Bill Raduchel is no longer with the company [AOL Time Warner]."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Back home. Excuse me while

Back home. Excuse me while I tidy up around here.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 5:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

VOIP marches on

Nework World: "IBM has made the decision to go with IP telephony, embarking on one of the world's largest and most complex voice-over-IP (VoIP) projects."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Part 1 of Tony Perkins

Part 1 of Tony Perkins interview with the CEO of Sony over at Always On Network.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

It's a Supernova kind of day!

Four of the five stories on the front page of today's New York Times technology section are examples of the shifts taking place as software, communications, and media decentralize.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Popfile Update #4

I cut down the number of "buckets" into which messages are classified, and Popfile's accuracy in filtering spam has gone up to about 95%. However, I still get false positives, roughly one per day. Classifying real mail as spam is much worse than letting a few spams through. This is an area where Bayesian filters like Popfile do better than rule-based systems, but better may not be good enough. After spending hours training Popfile on over 3,000 messages, I'm at the point where I think it's worth using, though just barely.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 1, 2003

Notes from the Stanford Spectrum Conference

"Joi Ito" has set up a Topic Exchange channel for live comments on the conference.

Dave Sifry set up an open wireless node on site to route around the restrictions of Stanford's WiFi network.

(Later in the day) -- I'm sitting here watching the moot court at the conference while the streaming video from the same event runs in a window on my laptop. Sometimes we can have too much technology.

Anyway, the conference was a tremendous success. I was too busy participating to blog it, but "Scripting News" and the Topic Exchange channel listed above have links to several people who did.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack