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Cringely Misses The Point on Google and Microsoft Battle

Cringely (in NY Times) suggests that Google has no interest in becoming the browser and OS of choice, since most people use Windows and IE, where most Google searches originate. Is he smoking something?

Op-Ed Contributor - Chrome vs. Bing vs. You and Me - NYTimes.com.

The vast majority of Google searches are, of course, done on PCs running Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. It is not in Google’s real interest to displace these products, which have facilitated so much of its success. Chrome products are given away, so they bring in no revenue for Google, and they don’t even provide a better search or advertising experience for their users, the company admits. So why does Google even bother?

That's like McDonalds saying it has no incentive to displace home cooking because most people decide to eat McDonalds when at home. The two don't line up.

Google has every incentive to move search -- and other functionality -- out of Microsoft products and into Google products. In particular, the future of coordinated work -- where Google Apps are pointed -- is closely linked there. Maybe Cringely can't think past a time when Windows and IE are the shiznat, and companies are moving past the pre-web underpinnings of today's OS's.

But he doesn't even suggest that search might change shape, and Google wants to be the one doing it.

They say that generals are always prepared to fight the last war, and Cringely sounds like someone ready to diagram how the last era's war might play out again, with Microsoft having the dominant position on the desktop. But when the field has changed, and there is no desktop, what then?

UX Is The Beating Heart Of Tech

[via satori, ai]

Scrapbooking: Principles For Social Tools

In a recent post (see How Will Twitter Be Governed?), I pondered the potential for conflict between the aspirations of social tool developers and the communities using those tools. I have started to think about a set of principles for social tools that might somehow serve as a foundation for this.

So I have been eagerly looking for others' thoughts on this subject, and when I saw something related at Kashklash.net, it caught my eye:

[via kashklash:: exchanging the future » Blog Archive » Principles for a digital social enterprise by Franco Papeschi & Tory Dunn]

To invite further discussion, we are posting below the initial
thinking we have done on a set of principles and guidelines to support
the formation of ethical / sustainable social enterprise services.
(With contributions from Heather, Irene and Mark..thanks!)

1. Does the initiative help people use time to their best advantage?


2. Does it strengthen relationships between people?


3. Does it have a clear socially* beneficial mission (or in the
   absence of clarity, a positive trajectory in a socially beneficial
   direction)?


4. Does it produce more for a community/society/environment than it
   takes, including balance of profit distribution v. social reinvestment?


5. Is the initiative and its outcome sustainable in the long term?


6. Are the workings transparent, including products, processes,
   consequences? Are there processes in place to protect and steward the
   socially beneficial intent and outcomes?


7. Is it at least neutral for people who don’t use it? (i.e. doesn’t permanently reduce resources for non-users)


8. Is the result of any accumulation process socially positive?


9. Does it reduce barriers to access? Does it make things easier? Is it accessible in the broad sense of the word?


10. Is there no unjustified and/or artificial barrier to entry or exit?


11. Does it respect human rights and the culture it is in? (Although
    these may be in opposition, in which case, we believe, human rights
    should prevail.) Does it value diversity?


12. Does it build and substantiate trust and collaboration?


13. Does it foster socially positive, sustainable use of the data/information it generates?


14. Does it provide/use a means of value exchange that is appropriate to the context?

Further elements to be considered include:

1. Does it leverage and / or facilitate local ownership and economic development?
2. Is it scalable?
3. Is it applicable in different contexts/sectors?
4. Is it culturally adaptable?
5. Does if follow best practice in user-centric design?

*social used to indicate social / environmental throughout

We started this project focusing on the way social enterprise services can be designed to “create sustainable business-driven solutions to societal problems” (Paraphrased from http://www.goodcap.net/faqs.php), but we feel that the framework can be applied to all projects that aim to benefit society at large.

Some of this is perhaps inapplicable to the context of social tools that aren't explicitly aspiring to better the world, but I will put it in my scrapbook and steal thoughts from it.

Games, Flow, and Happiness

Virtual Goods, Real Pleasure, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

Came across this great diagram in a presentation from Ami Jo Kim on the economics in online games.

The implied two-by-two matrix defines so much of what happiness means in life: when the challenges we face are high enough to match our skills (and vice versa) we are in a state of flow. Otherwise, we are anxious, apathetic, or bored.

Said in another way, to be happy find a game worth playing, and play it.

Twitter, an Evolving Architecture

Evan Weaver, lead engineer in the services team at Twitter, recently gave a talk on Twitter's architecture at QCon London 2009. Abel Avram has a good writeup of the presentation, if you are given to deep strategies about performance (see InfoQ: Twitter, an Evolving Architecture).

The upshot is that Twitter has been converting the architecture away from microblogging architecture -- all about creating web pages -- to a microstreaming architecture -- all about efficiently messaging millions of users when millions of users update their status. Another good theoretical reason to not call it microblogging, by the way.