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10 Apr 07:36

Making rain

by Horace Dediu
D.L. Damore

Something to think about.

The following is a slightly edited transcript of a portion of the Critical Path podcast #79. I am reproducing it here for the sake of brevity and focus of discussion.

I’m going to try to put together an analogy together here that maybe will help us think through the Facebook Home and the Google Fiber issue.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to illustrate Google’s business model. The problem is that discussion has been polarized: Two camps have formed. One camp suggests that Google is a benevolent entity that does great things and only asks that we indulge their hobby of a business model called advertising. Fundamentally they are about pushing the envelope on technology, making wonderful things happen.

That is one camp. I call them the utopians. It may not be a nice thing to call them but I frame it as being exceedingly idealistic.

The anti-utopian camp is one that suggests that Google is an advertising company primarily, and fundamentally and overwhelmingly. And anything they do technologically is in support of that. The implication is that Google is sinister and manipulative, bent on getting away with as much privacy extraction as possible.

I believe that the anti-utopians dismissing Google as an advertising company sounds a bit incomplete. It’s not incorrect. It’s not erroneous. It’s just not a complete story.

And also the utopian view that they do everything for us out of the goodness of their hearts and that advertising is something that they are reluctant to do, saying in effect, “We only do it because it earns us enough money so that we can do good deeds.” That too is not an accurate picture. Google is a business and its business management team is hard nosed and knows what they’re doing and they are not purely idealistic in that sense.

And so the question could be where across this spectrum does Google lie? Possibly it moves around between these points. Where they are becomes a question of motivation and what they want to become.

But this is only one dimension. It does not help us answer the question of Home, or Fiber or Reader or Blink. Their actions seem contradictory. Holistic or selfless in one case, greedy and capricious in another.

Let’s step out of this spectrum and try to think of different ways which can describe the situation.

I propose a way to think about it as: Google tries to make a business succeed through having a huge amount of _flow_ in terms of data, traffic, queries and information that is indexed. So think about this idea of them tapping into a vast stream. The more volume that is flowing through the system the more revenue they generate.

As so given this very rough analogy I try to sharpen it up by saying: imagine it more as a river. And even more than a river, as a watershed, a river basin. Perhaps a giant basin the size of a continent. The business is, let’s say, capturing fish at the mouth of the biggest river, before it exits into the ocean at its delta.

And so your job (as Google) is to catch fish mostly at one point. It’s the most efficient way to catch fish because you have the most flow of water at that point and building nets is not trivial.

But in order for you to improve your business, to create more opportunity, presumably, you want to essentially have more water flowing.

And so how would you do that? Think of the Mississippi river. If you’ve got a net down at the bottom of the river, the question is how would you engineer, through civil engineering, or shaping the earth itself, a way of catching more fish.

The answer I think, in terms of the way Google might be thinking, is that they want to create more sources of water. So they would look to connect tributaries and lakes. “How about having another river join our river?” Let’s make sure that we have “everything east of the Rockies” flow into our river system.

Now, think of it this way: After you’ve gotten all the tributaries, what are the remaining sources?

First, you’ll want to make sure that no-one can dam or stop the flow of water into your main channels. And so you become extremely anxious about people building dams. That’s the number one concern.

So your strategy becomes one of “how do we avoid dam building”?

That’s one part of your strategy.

The other thing you could do to improve your business would be to make it rain more. So there’s the question in your mind of: If we had more rainfall, then everything will flow more rapidly and we’ll get many more tiny rivers forming and joining together into our main river.

Android and the Fiber business and even Facebook fit into this analogy rather well. In this context more rainfall means more people using the Internet. If you have more people you’ll have more rivers and you’ll have more water and hopefully more fish. Fiber means the water will flow more rapidly: you’re essentially dredging the riverbed.

But the two are very disconnected (rain, dredging and fish). So your strategy amounts to not really worrying about the ratio. You don’t create incentives to people who make rain in the form of fish catch quotas next quarter.

In other words, your performance as a manager of cloud seeding efforts should not be measured in fish.

Leadership should instead simply put out the mandate of “Go out and make it rain”.

So that’s the notion of Google going out on these projects and doing all these “great things” for us. They make it rain. The Internet expands. There is minimal censorship.

By the way, censorship is a dam. Being blocked out of a country is a huge dam. It’s actually more like building a mountain range that diverts water flow away from your watershed.

And so they have these notions of how to prevent these things from happening.

So it sounds like they are doing good things. It sounds like asking for it to rain; they want to make sure that people don’t divert resources; they want to make sure that there are no barriers between the raindrop and getting access to the channel to the ocean.

So it sounds like they’re doing all the good things like a good civil engineer. Like the US Army Corps of Engineers who developed the irrigation, flood control, energy generation and waterway transportation of the United States.

Google seems to be the world’s “internet civil engineer”. They are building all these things to make sure that we have good water (i.e internet) supply. That we have plenty of navigable channels. That’s the analogy.

But let’s not forget that the only reasons those things are happening is because they are catching fish at some point down the Mississippi.

From that point of view you have to ask yourself: do they deserve this concession? Because they are ultimately affecting the environment to such a degree; and the environment is the internet; and the whole scope is how the world operates.

That is where people have to step back and ask themselves: Even a group of civil engineers that have all the best intentions may realize that they didn’t think of all the consequences of their actions. A lot of the criticisms may come decades later. From people who’ll note an effect on the environment. Dams get silted, a lack of floods reduces nutrients to crops which then need fertilizer, which has a whole other set of problems.

That is when you have to reflect more deeply on what is right and what is wrong. So saying, as the City Council of Austin might: thank you for coming and paying for installing broadband for us. Fine, but we just don’t know what the unintended consequences might be. It all _sounds_ good but we don’t know if it _is_ good.

And similarly, in the case of Facebook, there is a subtle hijacking going on where Android creates more rain, and Facebook and Amazon are essentially putting down nets and catching fish upstream. They’re not damming the tributaries. They’re not putting up mountain ranges and saying they’ll make sure the water flows away from the Mississippi. But rather they are putting nets and saying “Thanks for the rain”. They took advantage of what amounts to a public resource. Here the failure of anticipating consequences falls on Google. But they could not have possibly foreseen all that? Or could they?

Then there is the question of measuring success. It’s complicated and hard to measure performance. Even Google’s own performance. We don’t really know if the cloud projects work. We don’t get to run this as an experiment that can be tweaked as data comes in.

Google does not report performance. When they go off on these rain making projects, it’s natural to ask how many fish were caught as a result. Is that incremental new rainfall causing more fish to get caught. And Google won’t say anything about the profitability of rain making. They will never give you a profit and loss statement for all these projects: the dam eradication project, the project dredge a channel, the project to seed clouds. They will say that these are projects that will result in only one thing, which we do measure, which is the number of fish we catch in the delta of the Mississippi down by New Orleans. But so far although rainfall seems to be increasing exponentially there are not that many new fish.

So that’s where we struggle as analysts: is rainmaking good? Is the dam destruction process working? We can’t answer these question. And we don’t even know if Google themselves can. They might think of it as a strategic thing: it’s always better to have more rain than less and more water flowing. End of discussion.

To borrow a phrase from Zuckerberg, it’s above my pay grade to know what all the consequences are. I have opinions as environmentalists have opinions and sometimes they have some data to back up those opinions. For instance whether a dam project is a good thing on balance. But they are bound to have partial answers because the cost/benefit analysis is definitely missing a lot of the costs and missing a lot of the benefits as well. You can’t put a number on a lot of these things.

That’s where we are today. Google and Android are forces which are are very powerful but which are, to a large degree, uncontrolled, even by their own managers.

 

07 Apr 19:22

Be the First ‘WSJ Startup of the Year!’

by Juhi Desai

Want to share the story of your startup’s path to success? WSJ Live, the video network of The Wall Street Journal, is working on a new documentary series that will match world-class mentors with 25 innovative startups. We’ll be enlisting experts in entrepreneurship, including some of The Accelerators mentors, to provide founders with hands-on guidance as they build their companies from the ground up. We’re seeking dynamic, cutting-edge entrepreneurs to participate in this unique project. Sound like you or someone you know? Apply here and you might be named the very first WSJ Startup of the Year!

07 Apr 18:37

Quantified Self or Better to Quantify Someone Else: Can We Improve Ourselves By Mimicking Others?

by noreply@blogger.com (Hunter Walk)
D.L. Damore

Interesting questions.

The quantified self movement has produced any number of digital wearables allowing us to track our runs, our steps, our calories, and even our sleep. Then using our own motivation or target goals, we're supposed to change our behavior towards improvement. Easy, right?

However, I wonder if we're focusing on the wrong idea. Instead of tracking us as individuals, what if we used this technology to mimic someone who is already doing it right? Train like an athlete, eat like a nutritionist.

Imagine "following" someone and be made aware of their actions. Drink water when they drink water. Snack when they snack. Or follow the work pattern of the most productive person you know - how often do they check email? How often are they on Twitter? Should I follow the technology usage patters of MG or would my head explode?

Instead of measuring yourself and improving against some depersonalized target, would it be interesting to pattern our behaviors to someone else - in realtime, not just a training model - and as a community, live like someone else. Would that increase chances of improvement because we're part of a real collective?

The next gains in quantified self might not be hardware and sensors but sociology and community....
07 Apr 18:06

Feature Friday: Places People Go Next

by Fred
D.L. Damore

How will people (businesses use this)? Will they try to intercept people that are leaving the bar and heading for some late night food? Will someone give them coupons to try the restaurant just around the corner? Will this drive actual business? Will this business be more cash flow positive after interception costs?

I'm a data geek. I love data. And I love it when companies do interesting things with data, particularly my data.

So a few weeks ago, I was stunned to be told by Foursquare that the ice cream shop I had just stepped into was the most popular place people go to right after the japanese restaurant I had just left. This is a new feature Foursquare has rolled out on Android and I expect will be in the next iOS build.

I call the feature "places people go next" and I think it is awesome. Here's a screenshot I took of my home screen right after I checked into the Shake Shack on Wednesday at lunchtime.

Foursquare places to go next

So after a burger and fries, you are either going to get tea at Argo or a beer at Live Bait. I would imagine it has a lot to do with what time of day it is.

In any case, this is the kind of thing you can do when you have a dataset of billions of checkins from tens of millions of people all over the world. It's not just that you have the data, it's what you do with it, as Om so elegantly says in this post.

With new data driven features like "places people go next" coming out fast and furious these days, I am loving Foursquare more than ever. 

06 Apr 02:27

QUOTE: You know, one of the things that really hurt…

by Travis Jeffery

You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen.

And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. And you also find there are tremendous tradeoffs that you have to make. There are just certain things you can’t make electrons do. There are certain things you can’t make plastic do. Or glass do. Or factories do. Or robots do.

Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.

And it’s that process that is the magic.

—Steve Jobs

06 Apr 01:58

∞ Planes: A new Disney movie

by Jim Dalrymple
D.L. Damore

For a guy not into movies anymore, I'm excited about this one.

From above the world of “Cars.”

04 Apr 01:25

Happy Birthdays

by Horace Dediu
D.L. Damore

A new age is upon us. Touch screen, thin portable devices. With fast startup times as opposed to the standard desktop taking minutes to start.

Today is the iPad’s third birthday.  It’s also the mobile (cellular) phone’s 40th birthday.

Whereas the launch of the mobile phone was probably an obscure event, the launch of the iPad was greeted with derision.

It is perhaps with irony that we should greet this auspicious confluence of anniversaries.

04 Apr 01:22

→ Google jukes the stats

Bryan Bishop at The Verge:

As outlined on the Android Developers site, Google now uses the data collected when users visit the Google Play Store; under the previous system, any check-in to the store by the device would have been incorporated into the results, user-generated or not. The new system went into effect starting with this month’s results.

The change essentially skews the results towards those users who are actively visiting the Play Store. Google says as much on the page itself, noting that the new system “more accurately reflects those users who are most engaged in the Android and Google Play ecosystem.”

The Verge’s headline for this article: “Google changes how it measures Android version adoption, sees uptick in Jelly Bean devices”.

A more accurate title would be: “Google changes how it measures Android version adoption to show an uptick in Jelly Bean devices”.

You could argue that it better reflects the breakdown of OS versions among active buyers, but that means that Google’s statistics on version adoption can no longer be trusted to represent Android as a whole. Given that Play Store engagement seems about as disproportionally low as web-browsing marketshare on Android, these numbers now have far less relevance to the real Android market and aren’t useful for much.

It’s hard to see this change as anything but a desperate move by Google to attempt to hide Android’s poor update-adoption rates.

∞ Permalink

04 Apr 01:17

‘Has To’

by John Gruber

This tweet by WSJ reporter Jessica Lessin epitomizes everything that’s wrong with the Journal’s coverage of Apple of late:

New iPhone heads into production soon amid a new reality: Apple has to act more like Samsung if it wants to thrive.

Here’s the story. Now, if it’s true that Apple is heading into production on a new iPhone in the next few months to go on sale in July or thereabouts, it would be a change, insofar as each previous new iPhone has debuted a year or longer after the previous one. And if they unveil another new iPhone this calendar year — a lower-cost model — that would be an even bigger change.

But none of that is exactly Samsung-like, strategically. Samsung’s U.S. website currently lists 145 different cell phones. And Apple did the exact same thing with the iPad last year — a new top-of-the-line model just six months after the iPad 3, and a second lower-cost model in the iPad Mini.

As for “has to”, here are the last two sentences of the report:

Last year, Apple captured nearly two-thirds of the profits in the industry, up from 62% in 2011. Samsung’s share rose to about a third from 19%.

Poor beleaguered Apple, right?

 ★ 
02 Apr 02:37

Panini Express opens at City Centre building in Kalamazoo

by Ursula Zerilli | uzerilli@mlive.com
D.L. Damore

Limited hours. "is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays."

Panini Express will post their menu online every day and is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays.
02 Apr 01:50

The Building is the New Server

The Building is the New Server:

Scott Weiss of Andreessen Horowitz:

Well, it’s a good thing all of these companies also play a big part in the $55B server market — that’s not going away anytime soon, right? The worst days are over and hopefully their collective market caps will recover? Not so fast…

Very smart post. When you say the PC business is dying, so many are quick to jump on the “yeah, but the server business is robust!” bandwagon. It is. But not for long for most of the incumbents. Maybe all of them. This is what happens. In every industry. Change.

02 Apr 01:49

Yep.



Yep.

01 Apr 04:08

Maple syrup season: For an Ada couple, it's the sweet sign of spring

by Sandra Chang | sraak@mlive.com
David and Connie Theule, owners of Maple Hills Sugar Bush at 9450 Grand River Drive, have been in the syrup business since 1970, five years after the couple married.
01 Apr 03:59

Where Have All The Physical QWERTYs Gone?

Where Have All The Physical QWERTYs Gone?:

Steve O’Hear asks the question on TechCrunch and re-shares the email he once got from Steve Jobs when he asked about the possibility of a QWERTY on the iPhone. O’Hear was worried about a physical keyboard-free future for Apple, but believed it would never happen overall:

“That’s obviously a bit dramatic”, I wrote on TechCrunch at the time. “There will always be lots of different products on the market, but it’s a possibility nonetheless.” Fast forward to 2013 and what was only a possibility has all but become a reality. Survey the mobile landscape and it’s filled with people fondling their giant slabs of touch, happily typing away on glass.

It is pretty amazing that every popular smartphone has now ditched the physical keyboard, including the latest BlackBerry. This is especially amazing to me because I distinctly remember the outpouring of hatred sent my way five years ago when I wrote that the future was touch keyboards. And that there was no way Apple was going back. And that everyone else was likely to join Apple there.

I was an “idiot”. Who “knew nothing” about technology. Just listen to Steve Ballmer!

Change happens gradually, then all of a sudden.

01 Apr 03:57

Haters Gonna Hate... Windows 8

Haters Gonna Hate... Windows 8:

Ed Bott:

If this were a political race, a 50 percent overall approval rating would be a solid base from which to start.

Okay.

Sure, you can use some convoluted guesstimations based on Amazon rating gobbledygook to deduce that people “like” Windows 8 somewhere in between Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Or you could just look at sales. And not just bullshit “sales” to OEM partners. Actual sales.

I still like my “shitshow” prediction from last year. This is all playing out exactly as I imagined it would. And I believe that will continue, even after Windows “Blue”.

The problem is twofold. 1) Windows 8 is mainly a turd — further turdified by shitty products like the Surface. 2) The PC industry as a whole is dying and Microsoft has no competent horse in the next-gen game.  

So let’s revisit this Windows 8 satisfactory nonsense towards the end of the year when we can see some sales data — at least as a shadow of Microsoft’s financial performance, shall we?

01 Apr 03:47

Rich Siegel: Our Travails With iCloud Sync

by John Gruber

Detailed, thoughtful piece by Rich Siegel of Bare Bones Software:

Core Data syncing: This is where the rubber meets the road for database-backed applications. Core Data is the application-level database framework supplied by OS X and iOS that provides the means for applications to store items, and data about those items, in a single database. Yojimbo, our product, was one of the very first to ship using Core Data storage — we’ve used it since 2006, and it works great for storing data locally in the way that the product needs it to. Syncing database changes with iCloud, however, is a very complicated and difficult job for Core Data.

That’s really the heart of it. Core Data really does “just work” for local storage, both on OS X and iOS, but that’s not the case with Core Data and iCloud.

 ★ 
30 Mar 05:41

Purging the Back Catalog

Apple recently announced that they will begin requiring all new apps and app updates to support retina displays and include support for the iPhone 5. I’m really happy about this move. It forces developers to update their apps to look good on the modern crop of devices. This will improve the overall experience of customers in the App Store.

I do, however, wish that Apple would go farther with this and rather than just preventing further updates to old apps actually remove them from sale. On May 1st, when this policy goes into effect, it will have been 222 days since the iPhone 5 was introduced. Any app that hasn’t yet been updated to support its form factor starts to enter into the territory of abandonment. Indeed after that date they will be in a state of policy enforced abandonment.

There are a few reasons I can think of for why an app wouldn’t have added support for the iPhone 5. The most significant of which being that it requires you to drop support for iOS 4.2 and earlier. I believe that kind of thinking will ultimately hurt the Store and the user experience for most customers. Supporting older devices at the expense of enhancing the capabilities of newer ones leaves the marketplace in a position that isn’t driving forward with momentum.

The App Store currently has around 800k active apps listed. I suspect a significant number of these haven’t been updated in more than 12 months. An app that is listed for sale but is no longer under active development creates the possibility for bad user experience. It is like a grocery store that leaves expired produce on its shelves. The best situation for customers is a marketplace where whichever choice they make results in a great experience.

I say this as someone with a substantial back catalog of apps, many of which I no longer actively develop for. I pull apps from my portfolio when I feel they no longer provide a reasonable user experience on modern devices. That said, I have a financial interest in keeping them listed as long as possible which clouds my ability to be objective.

Only Apple can make policies and decisions for the greater good of the App Store. Individual developers will and probably should make decisions in their own best interest. That is how markets work. So the only way to improve the average quality of apps in the Store is for Apple to act.

I’ve heard calls for Apple to be more selective in the quality of apps they approve for the Store. Attempting to define quality by some subjective measure is rife for controversy. I think it would be incredibly difficult to impose a sane way to judge quality above the basic levels already in place with the App Store Review Guidelines.

Instead, I think Apple would be well served to adopt objective measures for quality or at least freshness to improve the overall quality of the Store. Adopting such a policy wouldn’t fundamentally change the situation for developers; every app they submit already has to be approved. All that this would do is apply some of those same required criteria to the app on an ongoing basis.

As mobile ecosystems mature and the average level of quality across the market is raised it is harder and harder for Apple to differentiate themselves on base user experience alone. I believe it would be best for Apple (and its developers) if they take strong steps towards encouraging and ensuring that they have the best possible app catalog. There would be some heartache along the way but the thing that has always impressed me most about Apple is their ability to make tough decisions when the customer experience is on the line.



»
30 Mar 05:12

"If you can’t laugh together in bed, the chances are you are incompatible, anyway. I’d rather hear a..."

“If you can’t laugh together in bed, the chances are you are incompatible, anyway. I’d rather hear a girl laugh well than try to turn me on with long, silent, soulful, secret looks. If you can laugh with a woman, everything else falls into place.”

- Richard Francis Burton (via h-o-r-n-g-r-y)
30 Mar 04:39

Photo











30 Mar 03:29

Newell Rubbermaid consolidating 15 global design units in Kalamazoo with new company strategy

by Ursula Zerilli | uzerilli@mlive.com
D.L. Damore

Interesting.

The design center will house 100 industrial and graphic design jobs in Western Michigan University’s Business Technology and Research Park.
30 Mar 03:26

Is Easter becoming a gift-giving holiday? Average American will spend $145 on the holiday

by Melissa Anders | manders@mlive.com
D.L. Damore

spending an average of $145 on candy, decorations, apparel and food.

About eight in 10 adult Americans plan to celebrate Easter this year, and they anticipate spending an average of $145 on candy, decorations, apparel and food.
30 Mar 03:25

Entrepreneurial events to kick off April at Western Michigan University with documentary, pitch competition

by Ursula Zerilli | uzerilli@mlive.com
A documentary screening, a question-and-answer session with the entrepreneur filmmakers and a student business pitch competition are scheduled for the first weekend in April.
30 Mar 03:21

Naval Ravikant: The Entrepreneur’s Burden

by Naval Ravikant

NAVAL RAVIKANT: If you’re an entrepreneur, your work is your life. Now, you can (and should) balance your time by paying attention to your health and your loved ones. But you won’t be able to balance your thoughts — they will likely be consumed by your business.

When balancing your time, I’ve heard all sorts of tricks – usually about cutting off email after a certain time, setting aside time for personal pursuits, relying on strong people to delegate to, having great hobbies, exercising, etc. But balancing your mental attention? Nothing has helped me to accomplish this.

Follow @naval

Follow @wsjstartup

30 Mar 03:21

Wilson Camilo Uribe Neira and Loic Le Meur

Loic Le Meur shared from What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsman, Roo Rogers
"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”"
Note: so true


29 Mar 22:35

How will driverless cars change our cities?

by Tyler Cowen
D.L. Damore

Self driving cars and changes in society.

From Issi Romem:

  • Cities will greatly expand, again: Faster and more efficient transportation will convert locations that are currently too remote for most users into feasible alternatives, abundant with space. Like suburban rail in the early twentieth century and the mass consumer automobile that followed, driverless cars will generate a gradual, but dramatic expansion of cities.
  • Buildings and parking will be uncoupled, freeing up valuable land: After dropping off passengers, driverless cars will independently seek parking (or their next car-share customers) and they will show up for the return ride at the tap of an app. As soon as driverless cars are common enough, the demand for adjacent parking will dwindle and parking lots in areas where land is sufficiently valuable will be ripe for conversion to other land use. As parking in high-value areas is thinned out or altogether purged, the micro-structure of cities will change – you guessed it – dramatically!

For the pointer I thank Josh Hausman.