The Tree is Cooler, but the House is Familiar

Richard Stiennon has an article at ZDNet that shows via some interesting pictures why Windows is less secure than Linux. The theory, which sounds logical to me, is that “in its long evolution, Windows has grown so complicated that it is harder to secure.”

I suspect that is the case. Imagine a house on which you add new rooms and wings every year or so. Eventually, there are so many windows and doors that anyone who tries can find a way in and the original burglar alarm isn’t equipped to handle all the new stuff.

That’s probably a good way to think of the Windows security issues.

That, of course, and the fact that everyone lives in houses, so the crooks know that’s where the goods are kept. If everyone lived in trees, the crooks would focus on trees.

In other words, the fact that most people use Windows means that the virus and spyware writers focus on Windows.

Granted, you could use Linux if you wanted to have a more secure system, but I’ve used Linux and while I appreciate all that it can do, it is simply too hard to configure for the average computer user. Plus, a lot of the software that people are used to doesn’t have a Linux version. The smart choice may be Linux, but clearly the easy choice is Windows. In that race, I generally put my money on easy.

When forced to choose between safe in a tree or vulnerable in a house, most people pick the house. Even if the tree is cooler.

So we patch and firewall and hope, while Microsoft keeps building more rooms.

Web 2.0 Wars: Quarter-Finals Round One

The Web 2.0 Wars season has come to an end. The list of winners and playoff brackets were posted the other day.

Now it’s time for the first round in the quarter-finals.

Here’s how the playoffs will work. After taking a look at my prior commentary about each application, I’ll revisit the page and see what, if anything, is new. I’ll add an update for each contestant and pick the winner.

Here are the contestants for the first quarter-final round:

Pageflakes
YouTube
Poddater
TailRank (replaced Tagworld)
FireAnt

Pageflakes is a content aggregator and custom portal. It is easy to set up and has some pre-configured content to help you get started. You can import your RSS feeds or add content manually. I still prefer My Yahoo, but that may be because I am so familiar with it. Pageflakes is a well designed and easy to use application.

YouTube is a video hosting, sharing and search service. It’s free and seems fast and reliable. Since it won Round 2 back in early February, it has really taken off. Even people who know little about tech and the internet are becoming aware of YouTube. This week I noticed a secretary in my office watching this somewhat pitiful and somewhat hilarious ego-fest (Warning: strong language; not suitable for kids). Youtube is a force to be reckoned with.

Poddater is a personals meets podcasting site. You make a video profile and upload it to share with others. I’m about a thousand years too old to be interested in this, but it’s a unique idea and the web site looks very well designed. This is one service that I can’t sign up and try for obviously, but the idea is a good one.

TailRank is a memetracker, and a mighty fine one at that. Since winning Round 4, Kevin and crew have added one excellent feature after another to TailRank. Listening to users is smart on so many levels, and Kevin listens to his users. A well designed and useful application with huge potential.

FireAnt is a video blog directory and search engine. The downloadable client allows you to watch video blogs in many different formats. You can search for content and you can subscribe to RSS video feeds and have content delivered to you automatically. It’s a neat service, but I still prefer YouTube for my video needs.

And the Winner of the first quarter-final round is:

While all of these applications are excellent and have great potential, YouTube and TailRank are juggernauts of the new internet. Either one would be a great choice to move to the Final Four, but YouTube’s penetration into the non-tech population gives it a slight edge.

YouTube moves to the Final Four.

TIVO Deathwatch: DirecTV Wins Again

This heart of mine could never see
What everybody knew but me
Just trusting you was my great sin
What can I do, you win again

– Hank Williams

DirecTV and TIVO made an announcement today that at first blush sounds like great news. At first blush.

In the wake of DirecTV abandoning TIVO in favor of some as yet unreleased DirecTV branded recorder, the parties agreed to extend their “commercial agreement” for 3 years.

So what does this mean for DirecTV customers who use TIVOs? In my house we have 4 of the HDTV DirecTIVOs. I call them our $1000 doorstops in waiting.

First of all, it won’t keep our TIVOs from being obsolete in the face of the move to MPEG-4 by DirecTV as a part of the roll out of local networks in HDTV. In fact, the Houston stations are supposedly available now in HDTV. The only problem is that there is no MPEG-4 compatible DirecTIVO or equivalent. So while today’s news likely means that my DirecTIVOs will continue to receive the channels that are currently available, they will not get the Houston HDTV locals or presumably any new DirecTV HDTV content, which will likely be pushed in MPEG-4 format.

It also seems unlikely that TIVO will produce a new MPEG-4 compatible DirecTIVO. And if it did, the fool me one rule dictates that consumers not buy it in light of the 3 year term of the new agreement. I suppose if the unit came out shortly, I’d consider buying it, as 3 years is a long time in tech-years. But every day that passes makes that a less desirable option.

While this deal sends a little oxygen into TIVO’s breathing tube, the real win is on the DirecTV side of the ledger, as part of the deal is an agreement that TIVO will not sue DirecTV for patent infringement, like it is currently suing EchoStar, operator of the Dish Network.

Meanwhile, DirecTV continues to develop and market their own branded digital recorders.

TIVO does get an extension of the $1 per month per TIVO box payment from DirecTV. This is worth about $36M a year- which is real money.

Commenting on the new deal, Nyquist Capital cuts to the bottom line and says:

In short, we’re a little stumped why the market thinks this is such a great deal beyond protecting a recurring revenue stream. If DirecTV had agreed to use Tivo exclusively and stop in house development, that would be big news. All that has really happened is a further extension of the status quo.

My conclusion is that someone at DirecTV got smart and proactive and cut a deal with TIVO that DirecTV views more as a settlement of the potential patent infringement claim than a business deal, in exchange for continuing the $1 per month per TIVO box payments for 3 more years. The fact that this will delay enraging all of the DirecTV TIVO users is just icing on the cake.

Let me say it again- this is about lawsuit avoidance. Think of it as a pre-settlement of a potential lawsuit.

TIVO gets some much needed cash to keep the lights on while it tries in vain to reinvent itself. DirecTV gets out of a potentially messy lawsuit and can claim to be taking care of its TIVO-loving customers.

Thomas Hawk (like me a TIVO user), while agreeing that there is less than meets the eye here, calls it a win/win. From the stands it sure looks like it.

But I bet if you pulled up the photo finish tape and had the contract in your hand, one horse’s nose clearly hit the finish line first.

DirecTV wins again.

An Internet for Every Laptop

In a move destined to up the stakes in the internet multiplier game, a company called Webaroo has developed a tool that will put the internet (well, at least the important parts of it) on your laptop. No more pesky internet connection problems.

For a mere 40 GB of space, you can take the internet with you.

Google, who has been developing a measly one new internet, will certainly feel pressured now to develop a few more. Maybe Google will announce a program to put internets on iPods or maybe cell phones. I have a refrigerator that should be good for 7-8 internets.

Techdirt, as always, has a good read on this story.

Look, I travel a good bit. And the lack of an internet connection can be a pain. But there are three forces already in motion to fix this problem:

1) Free wi-fi. Many cities and lots of businesses are rolling out free wi-fi as a public service and/or a way to attract traffic. The shopping mall beside my office just announced that it has free wi-fi for visitors.

2) National wireless networks, like Verizon’s, which I use and have written favorably about here. At $15 a month extra to use my phone as a modem, one business trip per month without the need to buy access from a hotel or airport pays for the cost.

3) Airlines are gradually rolling out internet connections on their airplanes. Granted, there will probably be a cost involved. But if you need the internet for business, a small charge isn’t going to keep you from connecting. If you are not traveling on business and you can’t generally do without the internet on a plane, you need to reassess your priorities.

I also wonder what the business model is here. Are ads pushed in addition to the internet content? Will content providers pay to get in or at the top of the saved cache? If it’s free (and it is according to the FAQ), there has to be revenue from some other source. The only one I can think of is the old Web 2.0 standby- ads. Either directly or indirectly via page placement within the downloaded cache. If there’s another logical revenue stream, I can’t think of it.

So, I guess I’m wondering- what’s the catch?

In sum, an offline internet might solve a few problems for a few people, but I don’t see much of a business opportunity here.

Bott vs Cringely and My Lawyer Newsome Story

I have a confession to make.

I’ve never watched much public television. Yes, I like Austin City Limits. And yes, I love PBS’s children’s shows, which my kids used to watch a lot before they learned about Sponge Bob and Scooby-Doo. But other than the mysteries that used to come on on Thursday nights, which I quit watching when that guy who played such an excellent Sherlock Holmes died, I have watched very little public television.

So I’d never heard of Robert X. Cringely until a few months ago. Apparently he’s a tech writer for PBS. While I’m in confession mode, I didn’t even realize there was one PBS. I thought PBS was a name for the various public television stations around the country who produce those great kids shows and other stuff favored by hybrid drivers and vegetarians.

But I digress.

Ed Bott came out swinging yesterday over an article Cringely wrote that touched on computer security.

It seems that Cringely mischaracterized some comments made by Mike Danseglio, program manager for the Security Solutions group at Microsoft, at the InfoSec World conference. World conference. Why not Universe conference? I know, why not Conference that Encompasses all of Time and Space? World conference. World Series. My old neighbor World B. Free. Names are the tattoos of the needle averse crowd.

Without going into a bunch of detail, Cringely quoted Danseglio as saying that the best way for companies and governments to deal with malware and spyware infestations is to put in place automated processes to wipe clean hard drives and reinstall operating systems and applications periodically.

What?

Has this guy ever even been inside a big corporate office? Does he have any idea how hard that would be to implement? It would require first and foremost a way to backup everything on every computer on the network. And here’s a news flash. Many if not most big companies store emails and documents on central servers. What they do not do is back up the hard drives of every local computer regularly, if at all.

You can’t rely on the desktop users to know how not to open an email from a stranger that says “I Love You,” so you certainly can’t expect them to know to or how to back up their hard drives. You also can’t explain to them why all of their locally stored data disappears every couple of weeks or months.

In sum, that is an unworkable solution for many companies.

To make matters worse, but much more interesting, Ed busts on Cringely for mischaracterizing what Danseglio said. Ed says, and based on what I read at the eWeek article I’d have to agree, that Danseglio said only that a hard drive wipe and reinstall is a last resort against a deeply infected machine. He also said that prevention was the best approach. From the eWeek article:

“The easy way to deal with this is to think about prevention. Preventing an infection is far easier than cleaning up,” he said, urging enterprise administrators to block known bad content using firewalls and proxy filtering and to ensure security software regularly scans for infections.

Ed smacks Cringely around pretty good and concludes:

If it says Cringely, you know it’s wrong.

I also didn’t know that Robert X. Cringely wasn’t this cat’s real name until I read Ed’s post. Why, exactly, does a tech writer for PBS need to pull a Marion Morrison and create a stage name? I am highly suspicious of anyone who isn’t a John Wayne-equivalent who uses an alias. A handle, like The Internet Guy, The Sports Guy or whatnot is fine because nobody believes that’s a given name. But using another name is just too Dragnet for me.

Also, I get really hacked when someone introduces themselves to me using their middle initial. “Hello, I’m Harcourt P. Livingston,” usually results in me going half caveman and half Cher by thumping my chest and saying “Kent” a couple of times.

Some people have like five names. I once met a guy who had five names and was the IVth. We didn’t hang out much.

All of this reminds me of something that happened many years ago in my wife’s hometown. We had been to her parents’ church and were standing around talking outside after the service. Some guy walks up to me and puts out his hand (now remember, this was a social setting) and says “Hello, I am Dr. So-and-so.” I shook his hand and said “Pleased to meet you, I’m lawyer Newsome.”

As I knew he would be, he was offended. My point was made.

Names. You have to love ’em.

About the Video Hosting Services

Dwight Silverman has a post this morning about the various video hosting services. He links to a post by DVguru that summarizes many of the options. I’ve looked at many of these sites as a part of my Web 2.0 Wars series and I’ve uploaded quite a few videos to test them out. Here’s my take.

I have traditionally used Castpost to host the videos I upload, because I am an alpha tester and because it was one of the first services that appeared on my radar. Castpost is still in alpha testing and has fallen behind some of the other services in the mindshare race. I hope it catches up, but in the meantime, I want to talk about the other video-related sites I use.

For finding good (and by good I generally mean funny) content, I start with YouTube and end up with Google Video. If there’s something video-related starting to create a buzz in the blogosphere, 9 times out of 10 it will be available on one of those sites. I like YouTube’s layout and interface better, but Google Video is easy to use and much better than many of Google’s recently added “me too” services.

But there’s another option for hosting video content you want to quickly add to your blog that I like better than either of those.

Stickam is neat because, in addition to uploading video files, you can create a video with your webcam directly from the Stickam application and save it directly to your Stickam account. A link is then automatically generated that will allow you to embed that video on a web page or in a blog post. The main Stickam page is too busy and not quite as intuitive as YouTube’s, but the extra features make it my choice for the creation and/or uploading of video content.

If you want to create, combine and edit videos online, the place to start is probably Jumpcut. One cool thing about Jumpcut is that you can remix other people’s videos to make your own version. I found this excellent song and equally excellent video at Jumpcut.

For me it breaks down like this:

Finding Video: YouTube; Google Video
Uploading Video: YouTube; Castpost
Creating Video for My Blog: Stickam
Editing and Remixing Video: Jumpcut

Newsome Research Report: The Sky is Still Blue

blue
Important Newsome.Org Research Report

The blogosphere is all a tither over a new Forrester Research report that says virtually nobody (percentage wise) listens to podcasts. Om says that’s OK because the glass is half full since more people listen to podcasts than use Web 2.0 applications. Look for Om’s new show on the Comedy Channel, because that was Onion funny.

Before gazing up to the sky in preparation for our new research report, those of me at Newsome Research asked a random sampling of the people at our dinner table the other night (3 families worth, with 2 iPod owners among them) if they listened to podcasts. I’ve tried to ask this question before, but people just looked at me blankly for a second or two before going back to whatever relevant conversation I had interrupted.

50% of the iPod owners knew what a podcast was, but none of them had ever listened to one. This is true notwithstanding the fact that one of the attendees (that would be me) does a podcast.

I’m almost 100% certain that, except for a couple of people who listen to my podcasts from their computers so they can tease me about the fact that I do one, no one I know in the real world has ever listened to a podcast. I am exactly 100% certain that no one I know in the real world has ever listed to a podcast on a pod.

Sometimes those of us in the tech blogosphere start believing that anyone other than us cares about the stuff we care about. That is a huge mistake. We are blogging and podcasting for each other. The 5 blog readers without a blog probably have a blog by now. Embrace the truth and it will free you. And all that.

Now back to podcasts.

Om points out correctly that podcasts are still hard to do. Doc Searls and I have talked about that as well. Don Dodge says it’s about user impatience, and I think he’s onto something. That’s why Podzinger will rule the podosphere if it can get word searching to work right.

So why do we do them?

Because we are interested in the technology and because we can. Sure, some people listen to them, but I suspect that most podcasters have little or no interaction with their listeners. You can’t leave a comment or a trackback to a podcast (sure, you can to a post talking about the podcast, but that’s different).

Podcasts are, for me, a supplemental and less interactive addition to my blog. Because I talk about music some, they let me play some of that music for people. I can assure you of one thing- if I didn’t have a blog, there’s no way I would go to all the effort of doing a podcast.

Om has 700 listeners. In podcast numbers (which are something like dog years), that’s like a million. Of course Om is well known as is his co-host Niall Kennedy. If I quit my day job and did nothing but podcast for 15 years, I might end up with half that many listeners. Then, of course, I would decide that podcasting is too hard and stop- making all that effort for naught.

So unlike blogging, where I disagree with those who claim not to care about having readers, I don’t think any sane person who isn’t Om or a near-Om would start podcasting and expect his or her numbers to get far into the triple digits. Podcasters podcast for a hundred different reasons. Ones who want to stay sane don’t do it for the traffic.

I don’t understand who is surprised by this new Forrester Research report. Perhaps the same ones who will be surprised by the latest Newsome Research Report. Tomorrow morning, I’ll look up when I go outside and do an update.

When the Music’s Over: Blogging Through a Dry Spell

When the music’s over, yeah
When the music’s over
Turn out the lights

-The Doors

The more I write this blog, the more similarities I see between songwriting and blogging. They have converged, at least in my mind, into two sides of the same coin.

Both kinds of writing are, first and foremost, about self-expression. They are about taking an idea and presenting it in a way that is hopefully a little clever, a little insightful and a little universal. They are about leaving an impression; planting a line in the listener or reader’s mind, so he or she will buy your record or subscribe to your blog.

Mostly, they are both about being heard in a noisy world.

I’ve been a songwriter since the early 70’s, when some high school buddies of mine recorded one of my songs. I still remember where I was the first time I heard that song on the radio (at the public tennis courts in my hometown- someone called me to their car when they heard the DJ introduce the song).

I wrote songs throughout high school, then took a 4 year break as I focused on other things, only some of them study-related, during college.

I spent 3 years in Nashville after college and began writing and playing more while immersed in the great music scene that was the Nashville of the mid-80’s. I’ve written songs pretty consistently since then.

Except, of course, when I don’t.

Many years ago when we first started writing songs together, I told my friend and long-time writing partner, Ronnie Jeffrey, that I went through semi-regular dry spells. Periods of time during which no songs came to me. Times when I could sit with a pen or guitar in my hand for hours on end and not one line or melody would come to me. Usually, these spells last a few months. Sometimes they last a year.

I’ve been in one now for well over a year.

When I started blogging, I had so much to say. I didn’t think I would ever have to struggle to come up with a topic I wanted to address. For a long time, it wasn’t unusual for me to post 5-6 times a day. People talked back, which led to more conversation. I thought the well was bottomless.

But alas, it is not.

Lately, I have found that the same sort of dry spells happen in blogging too. I’ve been in one for a couple of weeks now. Normally, I do most of my writing at night and on the occasional weekend day when the kids are on a sleepover or otherwise not around to play with me. I write drafts of posts or ideas, which I finish up and publish at various times during the week. Lately, when I sit down to write I find that I have less to say than normal.

Phil Sim thinks this may be because the tech-related blogosphere has peaked. I have to admit that most of what Phil says makes sense to me. I still scour my reading list and the memetrackers for interesting conversations to join- I just haven’t felt as compelled to jump into the fray lately. Dave Winer used to be a sure-fix for something to write about. Lately, I’m as bored by his blogging as he is (no offense intended to Dave- my point is that I can understand why he’s about to stop blogging). Even my always dependable buddy Mathew Ingram seems to be struggling a little to find stuff to write about.

But somehow this feels a little familiar. As if I’ve faced the same wall before.

It feels amazingly like a songwriting dry spell. Ideas that lose steam. Draft posts unfinished. A vague apathy when I read something that normally would elicit an immediate response.

When you’re young and irresponsible, there are ways to kick-start yourself out of a dry spell. Read Carlos Castaneda, travel to India, change religions, drink mezcal. Don’t think for a minute that a musician’s inability to make music in middle age as good as the music he made in his 20’s is a coincidence. It’s not.

When a dry spell happens to a grown-up with responsibilities, about all you can do is ride it out. Write less so your quality doesn’t suffer too much. Wait for something or someone to kick start you into a flow of opinions and perspectives.

Every time I have a songwriting dry spell, I wonder if I’ve written my last song. Having been in one now for so long, I may have. I don’t want the same thing to happen to my blogging.

I want to want to write more. Someone throw me a rope. Pick a fight with me. Just do something to kick-start the conversation.

I hope the blogging dry spell will pass like the prior songwriting ones did.

In the meantime, all I can do is ride it out. And wait.

Is It Safe? Kids and the New Internet

zell Christian Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: Yes, it’s safe, it’s very safe, it’s so safe you wouldn’t believe it.
Christian Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: No. It’s not safe, it’s… very dangerous, be careful.

-Marathon Man (1976)

One of the most effective and creepiest scenes in movie history is the one in Marathon Man in which Laurence Olivier asks Dustin Hoffman that question over and over. Parents ask themselves that question all the time to- about their kids and the internet.

The MySpace Problem

One of the most popular internet sites for young people is, of course, MySpace. For those few who don’t know what MySpace is, you can be sure your teenaged kids know all about it. Here’s the FAQ, but the very short answer is that MySpace is a hugely popular social networking site where users can share photos, journals and interests with their network of friends.

The problem, of course, is that kids often don’t realize the risks of putting too much information about themselves on the internet and the information they put on the internet can be accessed by just about anyone. Friend and predator alike.

The sad reality is that the thing that makes these sites so popular, the prospect of sharing information and making new friends, is the thing that makes them so risky for kids.

MySpace, which was purchased by News Corp, has announced that it is taking measures to make the site safer for teens. Among those measures are the deletion of 200,000 “objectionable” user profiles. The objectionable profiles contained primarily “hate speech” and material gently described by Ross Levinsohn, head of News Corp’s internet division, as “too risque.” Too risque, right. Sadly, our culture blew right past risque in the 70’s.

It’s Really an Internet Problem

Mr. Levinsohn made a good point, however, in the Financial Times article linked above when he said about objectionable content:

It’s a problem that’s endemic to the internet – not just MySpace.

Absolutely, that’s the case. Every parent I talk to struggles with a family internet policy that allows kids to use the internet for its many good uses while avoiding its many bad uses. My kids haven’t locked onto computers and the internet yet, but I have run into problems merely by allowing one of my kids to do a Google image search for cats or bunnies. When my kids start clamoring to use the internet, you can be sure I will have redundant filters and site blockers in place. Not because I think they’ll try to find the bad stuff, but because you can’t help but find the bad stuff because there’s so much of it.

Thank Goodness We Didn’t Have the Internet

Don’t get me wrong, had there been an internet when I was a kid, I would have gone to great measures to find exactly the sort of thing I now want to keep my kids away from. My friends and I collected quite a collection of impermissible contraband back in the day. But what was shocking in the 60’s and early 70’s is on primetime television now (which is why we watch exactly none of it in my house pre-bedtime). The indisputable fact is that there is a ton of stuff on the internet that most right thinking parents find totally unsuitable for their kids. All of this during a time when the internet is as much a part of most teenagers’ lives as the telephone was to ours. And all of this during a time when the internet is all about “social interaction.”

Is There a Solution?

What to do?

First, I believe we have to stop talking about teenagers as if they were in one group for internet purposes. There are many things that an 17, 18 or 19 year old can probably handle that should be completely off limits to a 13 or 14 year old. Nor, candidly, should we encourage 13 to 19 year olds to interact on the internet as social equals.

Additionally, kids learn a lot of stuff a lot faster today than we did back in the 60’s. An 11 or 12 year old today is easily as sophtisticated as a 13-14 year old was back then. The fact that there’s not a teen at the end of his or her age is not a compelling reason why he or she can’t do something like use the internet or chat with a friend.

We need to decide what sites are OK for young children and which sites are not. There must be more than just a single division of web sites. To apply a 19 year old standard to a 13 year old is to ignore the problem, if not promote it. Likewise, to apply a 13 year old standard to a 19 year old is a recipe for non-cooperation and avoidance.

So why aren’t these social networking sites being more proactive about this?

The crossroads comes, as it always does, at the intersection of money and morals.

Sadly, sin sells, both in the real world and the internet. Primetime television, music videos, even cartoons. For a company to do the right thing and prohibit marginal activities is to invite another operator to take that space. It’s an unworkable situation that can only result in a potentially dangerous environment mitigated only by half-hearted measures and lip service.

Which is what this latest MySpace clean-up looks like to me.

Even in Second Life, which I have written about favorably, these issues are a significant problem. Second Life attempts to deal with the “sin” issue by creating a mature filter which if applied is designed to keep users away from the most extreme (read highly sexual) content. I suppose it works a little, but a stroll through the “PG” rated portions of Second Life demonstrates conclusively that there is a very mature element at work. Dance clubs with sexy names and logos, casinos on every corner. Fine for adults, not OK for kids.

Not to mention that you have no way to know that the person who looks like and claims to be a similar-aged kid may in fact be an old man. That is reason enough to keep youngsters away, but it is just the tip of the iceberg.

MySpace, Mayberry Style

All of this leads me to two conclusions.

First, my kids won’t be allowed to use MySpace and its ilk, at least until they are in their late teens. Same for Second Life. They may not like it, but I don’t let them wander around any strange place by themselves. Not in first life and not in second.

Second, the social interaction space is screaming for a family-oriented social networking site. MySpace, Mayberry style. Second Life with the Cleavers. Such a site would be welcomed by parents all over the world. I’d write about it weekly.

It would have to be developed by the right person or persons. Not an organization with an agenda to promote. But by a non-denominational organization that wanted to create a safe place for kids and make a little money too. Not greater fool money, but corner market money.

My internet utopia would have 3 age-based zones, each separate and independent from the others. 10-13, 14-16 and 17-19. New users would have to be verified in some meaningful manner by their parents. Parents would also be verified and would serve as volunteer safety officers- with the ability to report violations and to exclude their own kids from activities, but not the ability to interact directly in the virtual community.

Perhaps there would be a way to create private invitation-only sub-communiti
es. I’d gladly set something like that up for my kids and their friends. Then I and the other parents could police it to keep order and make sure there are no interlopers.

Maybe something like that exists, but I’ve never heard of it.

As our kids get older and the internet gets more ingrained in our lives, it will become important to develop a family internet policy that allows our kids to enjoy the wonder of the internet while protecting them from it’s darker side.

I hope someone will be up to the challenge. I’ll certainly help any way I can.

Taking Some of the Hot Air Out of Web 2.0

I’m sitting here in my $400 a night room (and by room, I mean room, not big room and not suite) at the Hotel George in Washington, DC getting ready to give a lecture on ethics at Georgetown Law School. I’ve made my lecture notes and I have an hour or so to kill before I head over to the lecture hall and then rush to the airport to fly back home.

So I decided to read some of my feeds and see what’s going on in the blogosphere. And I came across a great article.

Paul Boutin has an article at Slate about Web 2.0. It does a yeoman’s job of explaining what Web 2.0 is, what it isn’t and why it means different things to different people.

Paul begins by looking to Tim O’Reilly for a definition of Web 2.0. What he gets is a bunch of technobabble that will confuse many, irritate some and enlighten none:

Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an “architecture of participation,” and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.

That’s a “pre-owned cars” take if ever there was one. Dude, just because you’re a smart guy with a big platform doesn’t mean you can’t use regular words. Answer the question in a way that a normal person can understand. No one I know would get past the second line before writing off Web 2.0 as either a creation of the media or a buzzword for the nerd set.

If I ever get asked by one of my real world friends what Web 2.0 is, the first thing I’ll do is faint. When I come to, I’ll say it’s a buzzword created by tech writers that refers to a new generation of online computer applications that generally promote social interaction via user-created content and user-supplied keywords that describe and organize that content. Some of these applications are core to that process and some are supportive by organizing the data into searchable lists and databases.

Paul goes on to describe other definitions of Web 2.0 used by other segments of the population.

Developers generally use Web 2.0 to refer to “gee-whiz features” of newly developed web sites, which are often based on Ajax, tag clouds, wikis and other collaborative tools. In general, these features are free (which is problem number one when someone tries to, say, sell one of them for $2B dollars), easy to master, and easy to interconnect.

And then comes the specter of Bubble 2.0:

A third definition gets thrown around in Silicon Valley. A “Web 2.0 play” is a bid to make money by funding a bring-your-own-content site. It’s a long-shot but low-risk investment that could become the next Google. Or at least the next thing Google buys.

Bingo. I’ve said it many times and like a street preacher I will keep saying it until the cops run me off: as long as these companies and their VC handlers don’t get desperate and start trying to take these science project turned companies public, that’s fine. But we’re starting to read more and more about IPO’s in the planning.

When that starts happening, we’ll know that Bubble 2.0 has reached a critical and dangerous stage.

Fortunately, Paul says that at least some writers and editors are hip to the salesmanship game that is sprouting up around some of these products:

Beyond that, publicists and self-promoters invoke Web 2.0 whenever they want to tag something as new, cool, and undiscovered- “This could be a big story for you, Paul!” That kind of hucksterism is what sends editors reaching for their red pens.

That’s a good thing, because many more Newsweek stories and Web 2.0 may become a momentum play for the non-geek retail investor. When that happens, the huffing and puffing will grow geometrically and all that will be left will be to watch the lesser fools get wealthy while the greater fools take another bath.

Paul goes on to argue that, at least as of now, Bubble 2.0 doesn’t look as dangerous as Bubble 1.0 was. I agree, for now. But you get Wall Street behind a few of these non-companies and let a couple of them make it out of the gate without a total disaster and you’ll see a race towards our pockets that would rival the last one.

Here’s to doing our part to keep that from happening, again.

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web 2.0, bubble 2.0