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Incredible images of the Sun

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:49:02 +0800

Jesse Robbins 2008-10-15

The Boston Globe has assembled a beautiful gallery of images of the Sun. This LASCO C2 image, taken 8 January 2002, shows a widely spreading coronal mass ejection (CME) as it blasts more than a billion tons of matter out into space at millions of kilometers per hour. The C2 image was turned 90 degrees so that the blast seems to be pointing down. An EIT 304 Angstrom image from a different day was enlarged and superimposed on the C2 image so that it filled the occulting disk for effect (Courtesy of SOHO/LASCO consortium)

[link courtesy Barry Brumitt]

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Unintended Consequences of Nationalizing Banks

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:30:29 +0800

Robert Passarella 2008-10-14

This is not a post for or against the actions of the Treasury. This is a quick look at what may be on the horizon--so that we can all keep our collective eyes open. I invite you to add your own observations and questions in the comments. I'd like to start you off with a couple.

Now that the US government has decided to force nine of the biggest financial institutions to take funds, what does that really mean?

What impact will there be on the internal risk allocation and compensation programs at these institutions?
In reference to JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and the rest, if the US government is going to limit risk in the short-term as a backstop to the taxpayer's investment--what risks to they choose to limit and why?
Will some of these firms exit proprietary trading as a whole?
How will limiting risk affect shareholder expectation of returns?
Also, if you limit compensation, I don't think it will be just CEOs singing the Paulson Prison Blues. What will attract the entry-level talent that looks to high performance bonuses at the upper levels as a goal?

This also means that the game for Wall Street is about to shift to new players. Make no mistake, a "Neo" Wall Street will arise from this action. The Citadels, SACs and others will fill the risk vacuum left unoccupied by the "old" investment banks. Also, key star players and their groups will migrate or go independent to escape financial and operational collars. And given that a lot of their options/equity compensation is underwater, the long-term incentives may be lacking to keep them in their current seats. The game may be changing, but this is not the end to global finance and capitalism.

My friend Roger Ehrenberg wrote down some of his thoughts on this issue, as well. Check out his two most recent posts:

Bailouts, Nationalism and Diplomacy

A Few Quick Thoughts on the Fed Plan

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Live Stream of MSR's Social Computing Symposium

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:09:58 +0800

Brady Forrest 2008-10-13

Microsoft Research is holding their annual Social Computing Symposium for the next two days. During the event their will be a number of speakers and discussion groups. The goal of the event is to bring together people from industry and academia. The four areas that are being discussed this year are Location (Monday morning), Boundaries (Monday afternoon), Play (Tuesday morning), and Social Objects (Tuesday afternoon). I've embedded the Live Stream above.

Here are the speakers:

Location (Monday morning, 10:30 - 11:30 AM)

Brady Forrest
Tom Carden (Stamen)
Felix Peterson (Plazes/Nokia)
Mary Hodder (Apisphere)
Tom Coates (Yahoo! Fire Eagle)

Boundaries/Context (Monday afternoon, 1:30 -2:30 PM)

Liz Lawley (RIT)
Lili Cheng (MSR)
Molly Steenson (Princeton)
Kevin Marks (Google)

Play (Tuesday Morning, 10:30 - 11:30 AM)

Elan Lee (Fourth Wall Studios)
Jesse Alexander (Heroes/NBC)
Paolo Malabuyo (Microsoft)
Merci Victoria Grace (GameLayers)

Social Objects (Tuesday afternoon, 1:30 -2:30 PM)

Jyri Engestrom (Google)
Matt Webb (Schulze & Webb)
Kati London (Botanicalls)
Rob Faludi (ITP)

Updated: Corrected some speakers

microsoft, msr, social gathering, video

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Games & Markets: Rules Matter

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:49:02 +0800

Robert Passarella 2008-10-13

As children (or even now as adults) most of us enjoyed games, whether they are sports, video games, board games, whatever. The defining quality in any of these pastimes is the ability to win in direct competition with others. What makes these games enjoyable is that once the rules are learned or agreed to by participants, skill should become evident as the winner emerges. Sure, luck is an element, but a firm strategy and great tactical moves in a game like Risk make a difference. They also allow a player to exhibit his skill. Even in the case of my own childhood, growing up on the streets of NYC, everyone knew and agreed on which buildings were in foul territory for a game of stickball. The same is true in markets.

Today we have entered a period in American financial history where the rules we lived by for so long have vanished. Markets are supposed to determine value as well as winners and losers. If a Firm employs a bad strategy in the game, it becomes evident in the stock price. Investors are rational even in their irrationality. The reason people pull their assets from the market at this point is simple--a fear of losing further, given uncertainty. This uncertainty, which started in mortgages, has now been exacerbated by the uncertainty and inconsistency of both the Fed and Treasury’s intervention into US markets. The Government’s inconsistent actions of choosing who will live or die in the battles of Bear Run, Lehman’s Crossing and AIGs-burg have given investors agita. Increased violations of a prime market rule: either you have moral hazard or you don’t. There is a reason Star Trek captains had a Prime Directive.

Perhaps if Bear Stearns were allowed to go bankrupt as Lehman did, a safety value would have been reached as investors recognized a world they understood. I can tell you that many at Bear wanted to go the bankruptcy route at one point. The pain may have been greater than the one we see now post-stimulus, $700 billion, and ~~possible~~ ~~eventual~~, inevitable nationalization of banks. But then again it may not have been. I remember clearly when the bail out bill was rejected by the House, many pundits and traders were forecasting a 3,000 point drop in the Dow. We’ve had a slow burn to get to that number in a week after the passage of the current bail out bill, but we did hit it. Even when firms blow up, the good parts of them survive and are acquired or salvaged. It is another market rule. Just take a look at the following story: 'Vulture' investors circle the market, ready to swoop in. As one of my twitter buddies @blackhorse pointed out:

Blackhorse @robpas They'll be competing against Paulson's $700 biliion "fund of funds" once he gets his asset mgrs in place. Should be fun to watch.

For those of you that thought privatization of Social Security was a horrible idea, congratulations--you now are the proud investors in a $700 billion dollar fund of funds run by US, Inc.

The reason many investors will not put money to work long term (more than a day or two) is uncertainty of future outcomes of Government intervention. Normally, some investors at this point would feel Mr. Market is out of whack and there is a mis-pricing of assets under the new rules set. This is why many of them were fooled with Lehman. The thought process was — Lehman is underpriced, the Government stepped in on Bear because of counter-party risks, Lehman is another huge counter-party, OK I’ll invest. Bango, the rules changed. The Government decided Lehman was allowed to go belly up. The last thing we want right now is investors with capital confused about when to invest.

Barton Biggs, formerly of Morgan Stanley and now running the fund at Traxis Partners, said it best on Bloomberg TV Friday:

"You've got to make a bet on whether the financial system and the market system, as we have known it since the end of World War 2, is going to survive." Full Article

I take that as--will the rules we have known and operated with as investors, survive in the near future? If not, which rules should we be following?

Investors, uncertain of which laws are in effect, are standing by bewildered, especially when a stimulus or bail out is enacted and the desired outcomes, hoped for by the Treasury and the Fed, don't appear. The economy has become resistant to many of the financial antibiotics prescribed by both Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke. Either they provide clarity on what the new set of rules are or they allow the older existing set of market rules re-establish themselves. Do not mistake a 900 point run up in the Dow today for victory. The central problem has not been solved yet. And if you think rule writing for markets isn't going on, then check in with Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, in a story from Forbes

"The stock markets are currently in the grip of panic and madness," Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told reporters in Naples, adding that world leaders were considering drawing up new rules for global finance.

Ben Bernanke is highly aware of their inconsistent actions, especially with respect to information and investment. From his MIT PhD thesis, some quotes:

“Chapter 1 analyzes the problem of making irreversible investment decisions when there is uncertainty about the true parameters of the stochastic economy. It is shown that increased uncertainty provides an incentive to defer such investments in order to wait for new information. Uncertainty and the volatility of investment demand are connected at the aggregate level.”

“Finally, the higher their prior probability on the occurrence of future states in which they will regret their illiquid investments (i.e., those future states in which desired illiquid stocks are less than those currently planned), the less the agents will invest in illiquid stocks.”

“The example suggests that when information potential is high, there is an incentive for investors to wait for the new information. This leads to a decrease in current investment.”

“Another realistic aspect of this example is the importance of timing of investments. Timing does not enter most theories of investment; usually, agents are theorized either 1) to make an investment, or 2) not to make an investment, according to some set of criteria. The present analysis adds another option for the agent: 3) wait and get new information. Thus there is a decision about when as well as whether to invest.”

Ben--tell Hank, we are all waiting to get new information and action from both the Treasury and Fed on a daily basis now. It is the new rules set that you have provided. No longer are we looking to regular news events and private action that would add to the market picture--we are waiting for events to come from Governments to drive the market. That is not good.

As investors wait for a measure of future certainty about rules we are using to re-enter the market, they are simply choosing not to invest at this point. This includes financial institutions choosing not to lend. Basically we are all a bunch of indecisive Halmets wishing to delay until we see the information tipping point, in this case which rules are we playing by. Until both Ben and Hank figure out the right set of words and actions, we're stuck. They decided to enter this game, so they need to finish this hand. They need to inform the market of the new rules and apply them consistently--so we can go back to playing our game. The age-old admonishment is in ‘da house, “You break it, you own it” or as that market sage Jeff Spicoli, from the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, would say,

"So If We Don't Get Some Cool Rules Ourselves, Pronto, We'll Just Be Bogus Too."

If you're interested in the future of the markets and how technology plays into that, check out Money:Tech 2009. The theme is "After the Goldrush: Financial Tools for New Times."

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Torkington's Law

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:49:02 +0800

Nat Torkington 2008-10-13

Here are two presentations that I've found particularly instructive in the market meltdown:

Making Sense of the Mortgage Meltdown: many numbers, tables, and charts to help you see the full number of sigmas the last few years represent.
Sequoia Capital on Startups and the Economic Downturn: this is a presentation from VCs about how startups should deal with the new market conditions. In short: batten down the hatches.

Sequoia is right on the money in my opinion: lock down, there's tough times a-coming. They say that if you don't have a year's cash in the bank, you're in trouble. I can believe it. Their best advice is to become cashflow positive as soon as possible. Hmm, weren't smart people saying this before? No, not just 37 Signals and our very own Marc Hedlund ... oh right! Sequoia were saying it in 2001.

I hereby reveal Torkington's Law: when VCs no longer emphasize becoming cashflow positive as soon as possible, you're officially in a bubble. You don't thank me now, but just wait four years until there's a new instrument that lets bankers manufacture money from thin air. When VCs smell silly money exits again, they'll remove those "unnecessarily limiting" bits of advice from their presentations because "this is a new world" and "this new market makes greater growth possible, justifying any temporary debt", and when they do you'll recognize it for the convenient self-serving venal lie that it is and cry "Torkington's Law! We're in a bubble!". The guy beside you in the soup kitchen line will look at you strangely, but ignore old Badger Pants Pete and rush out to start one of these new Web 3.0 companies all the kids are talking about so you can get some of that silly money for yourself. After all, the only reason to hate a boom is if you didn't get in before it ended, right? Right?

I think I need a bailout for my faith in human nature ....

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Tim In The LA Times On Getting Serious(洛杉矶时报讨论Tim的观点)

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:21:55 +0800

Brady Forrest 2008-10-11

As Tim mentioned earlier this week during tough times it's important to work on things that matter. The LA Times dives into Tim's thinking with a piece published yesterday. From the story:

O'Reilly argues that Silicon Valley has strayed from the passion and idealism that fuel innovation to instead follow what he calls the "mad pursuit of the buck with stupider and stupider ideas."
Flush with money and opportunity following the post-dot-com resurgence, he says, some entrepreneurs have cocooned in a "reality bubble," insulated from poverty, disease, global warming and other problems that are gripping the planet. He argues that they should follow the model of some of the world's most successful technology companies, including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which sprang from their founders' efforts to "work on stuff that matters."

翻译：xiaochong

Tim这周早些时候谈到困难时期应该把重点放在真正重要的事情上。洛杉矶时报昨天的一篇文章仔细介绍了Tim的观点。下面是文章的节选：

O'Reilly先生认为硅谷已经偏离了产生创新的激情和理想主义，取而代之的是O'Reilly称为的“疯狂地追逐钱，用的却是越来越蠢的主意。”后网络时代回潮带来充裕的资金和机会，Tim O'Reilly说，一些企业家已经迷失在“现实泡沫”中，对贫穷、疾病、全球变暖以及其他一些正困扰世界的问题充耳不闻。他认为这些企业家应该学习包括Google和微软在内的世界上最成功科技公司的模式，这些公司均起源于其创始人“做真正重要的那些事情”的做法。

tim, web 2.0, web2summit

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Over 300 iPhone Apps Use Location Look-Ups(超过300个iPhone应用使用位置查询)

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:31:36 +0800

Brady Forrest 2008-10-11

According to Skyhook Wireless over 300 iPhone apps are location-aware as of October 3rd. According to Mobclix there are over 4,000 apps in circulation. If these numbers are correct this puts the location-aware percentage at under 10% -- far, far less than I would have suspected based on my own experience. There were 5.5 location-aware apps released per day in September. The location-aware apps 61% are paid (less than the 76% found in iPhone apps as a whole according to Mobclix).

The Social Networking, Local Search and Navigation Categories represent over 50% of the apps. Social Networking includes Twitter clients and friend finders like Whrrl and Pelago. Once Apple adds background location updating (I hope -- Radar post) I expect the Sports category to bloom with pedometers, life-trackers and faux-GPSs.

Skyhook knows this because all of those apps use their service to determine a location. They've been tracking the apps as they've come out. Skyhook cannot publicly reveal the number of look-ups from location apps, but it's a lot. Right now the look-ups are evenly split between using the iPhone's GPS, WiFI (Skyhook's WPS), and Hybrid (Skyhook's XPS product can use Wifi, celltowers and GPS for a faster, more accurate lookup).

Skyhook has been making this data available for a while. You can find more on their site. All slides courtesy of Skyhook and posted with permission (regardless of what the Confidential footer may say).

I'll be discussing location-aware apps with Skyhook Wireless CEO TEd Morgan (along with Greg Skibiski (Sense Networks), April Allderdice (MicroEnergy Credits), and Rich Miner (Google) ) at the Web 2.0 Summit. If you have any questions for them let me know in the comments.

Paid Vs. Free

Location Lookups By Source

翻译:xiaochong

根据Skyhook Wireless的数据到10月3日超过300种iPhone应用能够感知位置。根据Mobclix的数据目前有超过4000个应用。基于这些数据位置感知应用所占比例低于10%——这远远低于我自己的估计。九月份每天就有5.5个位置感知应用发布。61%的位置感知应用是付费的（而所有类别iPhone应用中付费应用所占比列为76%）。

社交网络、位置搜索和导航类别所占比列超过50%。社交网络类包括Twitter客户和像Whrrl和Pelago这样的朋友联系工具。一旦Apple加入后台位置更新（我希望如此——Radar文章）我估计运动类应用（结合计步器、life-tracker 以及伪GPS）将会大火。

所有这些应用都使用Skyhook的服务来确定位置所以他们掌握这些数据。Skyhook从每个应用一出现就跟踪它们。尽管不能公开位置感知应用查询的数字但这个数字非常大。目前这些查询在GPS、WiFi（Skyhook的Wifi Position System）和Hybrid（Skyhook的XPS可以通过Wifi、手机基站和GPS组合进行更快速、更准确地查询）上平分秋色。

Skyhook已经公开这些数据一段时间了，可以从这里找到。所有幻灯片承蒙Skyhook允许使用。

我将和Skyhook Wireless CEO TEd Morgan（以及Greg Skibiski(Sense Networks)、April Allderdice(MicroEnergy Credits)、Rich Miner(Google)）在Web 2.0峰会上讨论位置感知应用。如果您有任何问题要问可以贴在下面讨论部分里。

geo, web 2.0, web 2.0 summit, where 2.0

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Seeing political links in color

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:49:03 +0800

Marc Hedlund 2008-10-10

Andy Baio and Joshua Schachter teamed up to create a totally interesting project for the political season: a way to immediately visualize the links from political blogs on Memeorandum based on how they tend to link -- to more conservative (shown with red tint) or more liberal (shown with blue tint) blogs. They write:

...we used a recommendation algorithm to score every blog on Memeorandum based on their linking activity in the last three months. Then I wrote a Greasemonkey script to pull that information out of Google Spreadsheets, and colorize Memeorandum on-the-fly. Left-leaning blogs are blue and right-leaning blogs are red, with darker colors representing strong biases.

I love the idea of getting a quick, visual indicator of a blogs' social peers (in the link sense). Check it out.

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Open Source in Defense

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:49:02 +0800

Jim Stogdill 2008-10-10

I’ve been meaning to write a post about open-source software in defense for a while and today my inbox achieved critical mass with the arrival of yesterday’s GCN article on the subject. The article previews a memo being prepared by the Defense Department’s CIO that should be released in early November. It will provide additional guidance on the use of open source software in defense and is meant to make it easier for the government to obtain the benefits that come with open source.

In particular, the memo will make it clear that government defense programs should evaluate open source as legally equivalent to commercial off the shelf. It also will clarify policy about participation and contribution back to the community. I’m particularly interested in that latter part as I’d really like to see the DoD improve it’s karmic positioning vis-a-vis open source consumption vs. contribution.

The GCN article was spurred by comments Dan Risacher gave this week at the Red Hat Government Users and Developers Conference. Dan is the principal author of the memo and previously gave an overview of the policy intent at our inaugural Barcamp.mil in August. Dan and I will be discussing the policy and it’s hoped-for impact (among other things) further on a panel at the 4th DoD Open Technology Conference in DC on October 29 if you would like to hear more about it.

With this memo, recent news coming out of Congress (here and here for a link to the bill), the ongoing impact of Sue Payton’s Open Technology Memo, and the rapid uptake of at least package open source (e.g. Red Hat Linux) in places like the Army’s Blue Force Tracking systems, we might be approaching a real tipping point for the use of open source software in defense. You’ll know it has tipped if the big five defense contractors start tripping over themselves to publicize their use of open source software and then go on to claim how open their homegrown systems are.

Outside of DoD but closely related, many people are aware of the NSA’s efforts on SE Linux. They made the news again this week with the release of the Tokeneer project to further research into secure systems.

While the DoD is tipping toward open source, the Intelligence Community continues to pursue social strategies. Following on Intellipedia, they are now preparing for the (re)release of A*Space. It is sort of a social networking site and application platform with big database access and is intended for intelligence analysts (hence the “A”).

Matthew Burton is an ex Intelligence Analyst and current open source developer who intends to write applications for A*Space. We first met at barcamp.mil and it turns out we are both looking downstream at what happens next as the government begins to embrace these open technologies. We use different words to describe what we think will happen, but we’ve both independently arrived at about the same place, somewhere that sounds like “activism through engagement,” or maybe just engagement.

I think open source software is a culture virus that has the potential to carry community, transparency, and collaboration across the government / citizenry boundary - with community participation as the carrier. Further, I’m hopeful that a bye product of that participation will be trust. I talked about this idea in my Ignite Philly talk (video) earlier this month.

I know this sounds crazy but I think it can be an incredibly powerful force. After all, think about the ways open source participation and social platforms are changing the companies we all work for. Twenty years ago it would have been difficult to find people who’s first instinct was sharing outside of academia. Now, it is frequently the norm and taking a proprietary approach is the exception that requires that a case be made.

Matthew touched on similar ideas with his outstanding essay “Why I Help ‘The Man’ and Why You Should Too.” Matthew does a great job of explaining why engaging in meaningful ways is important in making positive change. He extends the argument further than where I left off with open source software. It's well worth the read if you have a few more minutes.

Here's to tipping.

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Did you read the book from that movie?

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 09:56:15 +0800

Brett McLaughlin 2008-10-09

New Radar blogger Brett McLaughlin is the executive editor of O'Reilly's Head First books and a Java developer-turned-author.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that media is changing the way books are viewed. In fact, video - and YouTube in particular - has already changed how books are sold. Most big fiction releases are heralded by short "book trailers" that give an almost movie-like feel to the contents of the book.

But in a recent article published by the Christian Science Monitor, I was surprised to see that there's an even more notable link between movies and the sale of books:

In the upcoming Christian movie “Fireproof”, screenwriters created a book as plot point. The movie tells the story of Caleb Holt, a firefighter with a troubled marriage. To help prevent divorce, Caleb’s dad suggests he read a book called “The Love Dare.”
The book changes Caleb’s view of marriage and transforms his life. As soon as preview audiences saw the film, they began flooding bookstores with inquiries.

The only problem: The book didn’t exist.

It does now, however.

Brothers and associate pastors Alex and Stephen Kendrick, also co-directors and producers of “Fireproof,” sat down and penned such a book in the space of a few weeks. It hasn’t hit bookstores yet but has already sold 300,000 copies and may go on to become the bestselling Christian book of 2008.

This is pretty remarkable. Keep in mind, we've long seen books-turned-into-movies re-released with movie-centric covers. We've seen movies come out, and then books released that are adaptations of the movie, in cases where the movie's based on an original screenplay. But books that happen to be featured in movies? That's a new one.

Is this an isolated case? Or perhaps a phenomenon related more to religion and self-help tomes? Not so much; from the same article:

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s the story of the “Sex and the City” book. When Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) sat in bed reading a book called “Love Letters from Great Men” in a scene in the film, women viewers everywhere decided they needed a copy.
Again: As the press was quick to report, the book didn’t actually exist. (At least not with that title.)

But there was something close enough: a 1920s title called “Love Letters of Great Men and Women” reissued last year by Kessinger Publishing. On the strength of the movie, the book suddenly became a hot item for booksellers.

So what does this mean for publishing as an industry? Even more poignantly, what does this mean for learning books; the sort of books that O'Reilly and other technology, math, science, educational, etc. publishers routinely put out?

I'm not completely sure, although I plan on positing a few ideas in the coming days... but one thing that is clear: the competition for a book sale is no longer just other good books. Movies, videos on YouTube, even the latest Metal Gear Solid game on PlayStation 3 are increasingly key competitors. They're informing buyers about what to buy, in very unique and surprising ways.

And when the competition is no longer just books, everything changes... whether we acknowledge it or not. Anyone - or any company - that doesn't realize and react is going to be hurting before decade's end.

learning, new media, publishing

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Radar Report on Where 2.0: The State of the Geospatial Web

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:49:02 +0800

Brady Forrest 2008-10-09

The amount of geocontent on the web is expanding. With it has come an increased ability to use this data to sell location-based services that are tied to the web. Andrew Turner and I cover this shift in our new report "Where 2.0: The State of the Geospatial Web".

In the 55 page report we examine:

How Web 2.0 is empowering millions to publish and contribute geocontent to open services
How both community and public geodata are becoming available and freely disseminated
How mobile devices (like the iPhone and soon via Android) are becoming location-aware and leading to new privacy and data access concerns.
Open formats are leading the way for open data
How the net has caused the rise of immersive imagery and the use of
How crowdsourcing is being used to build up mapping data and imagery
How location-based gaming platforms are on the rise, but are still looking for the category-killing game

The report ends with a directory of the most significant companies in the Where 2.0 space. For 15 of the largest companies we include acquisitions, products and key public employees.

If you're a regular reader of my geo/mapping/location posts or an attendee of Where 2.0 then this won't be anything new to you. However, it will collect a lot of the key information, products and companies into one document.

My co-author Andrew Turner has also written a post on the report's release. We've made the first 15 pages available on Scribd.

Where2.0 Excerpt - Upload a Document to Scribd

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Thoughts on the Financial Crisis

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:31:40 +0800

Tim O'Reilly 2008-10-08

The other day, we received a blistering email from a Radar reader complaining about our silence on the subject of the economic meltdown. I wrote back:

There are a lot of people bloviating about the financial crisis. It's outside of our area of expertise, so there didn't seem to be a lot of urgency to add to the hot air. Even professional economists and financial experts disagree on where this is going. I've been reading a lot, and sharing the best links via my twitter feed, but frankly, I'm feeling that we're in the middle of a wave that no one completely understands.
Meanwhile, I did in fact spend my NY Web Expo talk on the idea that "I sense a storm coming" (Rilke quote), and the idea that companies and individuals need robust strategies (ones that can work even in uncertain times), with one robust strategy being to "work on stuff that matters."

That Rilke quote, from the poem The Man Watching, translated by Robert Bly, has this great line about letting ourselves be washed over by events greater than ourselves:

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming...
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

I've been feeling a lot like that. Watchful. Listening. Learning. Not rushing about fighting the small things of the moment but letting the storm wash in. It will change us. That can be good. And as the storm washes through, it will become clear what we have to do.

I've been quoting that poem in my talks since Why I Love Hackers at ETech in March. It ends with a ringing invocation to work on challenging problems, problems that stretch us, as the wrestlers of the Old Testament were challenged by wrestling with the angel. That seems to me to be the heart of what we need to do now.

I hadn't thought to do this earlier, but it occurs to me that I might also share here the message that I sent out to all O'Reilly employees by email a week or so ago (edited slightly to remove a few company-specific details):

Many of you have no doubt been alarmed by the developments of the last couple of weeks in financial markets, so I wanted to put a few thoughts out to all of you before disappearing on a combination of vacation and business travel for the next 3+ weeks.
...at the last company meeting, I talked about a theme that I've expanded on in public talks like the one I did at Ignite Boston and at Web 2.0 Expo in New York the week before last: the idea that robust strategies are ones you'd adopt in good times and in bad. And I argued that we probably end up with more robust strategies if we assume the worst rather than the best.
We could be in for a long, rough time in the economy. I'm not going to say otherwise.
But I also want to point out that rough times are often the best times for creativity, opportunity and change. We transformed ourselves from a technical writing consulting company into a book publishing company as a result of the huge economic downturn of the mid-80s. After the dotcom bust in 2001, we launched Safari Books Online, Missing Manuals, the Web 2.0 conferences, Foo Camp, Make: magazine, the O'Reilly School of Technology, and a host of other initiatives that have fueled our growth and that define the company today. We diversified and invested in new ideas.
It was a painful period but one that made us better and stronger as a company.
And if you look at history, you see that this has always and everywhere been true. It's not an accident that economist Joseph Schumpeter talked about the "creative destruction" inherent in capitalism. Great problems are also great opportunities for those who know how to solve them. And looking ahead, I can see great opportunities.
The energy crisis (both global warming and the oil price shock) is helping people to focus on how technology can transform the energy sector. The financial crisis has demonstrated just how out-of-whack an unregulated, proprietary, black-box approach can get. This will lead to an emphasis on regulation, but I hope, above all, on transparency. This is of course analogous to what happened with open source software. Meanwhile, the mobile revolution will continue, regardless of the state of the economy. If it can prosper in Africa, it can prosper even in an American downturn. And all the stuff we're exploring with Make: new materials, new approaches to manufacturing, and the "open source" approach applied to hardware, will take us in unexpected directions. And all of these areas can benefit from what we do best: capturing and spreading the knowledge of innovators.
We don't know yet how problems in the overall economy will affect our business. But what we can do now are the things we ought to be doing anyway:

Work on stuff that matters: Assuming that the world does go to hell in a handbasket, what would we still want to be working on? What will people need to know? (Chances are good that they need to know these things in a world where we all continue to muddle along as well.)
Exert visionary leadership in our markets. In tough times, people look for inspiration and vision. The big ideas we care about will still matter, perhaps even more when people are looking for a way forward. (Remember how Web 2.0 gave hope and a story line to an industry struggling its way out of the dotcom bust.)
Be prudent in what we spend money on. Get rid of the "nice to do" things, and focus on the "must do" things to accelerate them.
These are all things we should be doing every day anyway. Sometimes, though, a crisis can provide an unexpected gift, a reminder that nobody promised us tomorrow, so we need to make what we do today count.

This seems like good advice for Radar readers as well. I will try to write further on the theme of "work on stuff that matters" in the days ahead.

economy, finance

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eInk...

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:48:53 +0800

Nick Bilton 2008-10-08

Guest blogger Nick Bilton is with the New York Times R&D Lab during the day and NYC Resistor at night.

Working in the R&D Labs at The New York Times, I'm constantly asked, "How long will paper be around?" or more to the point, "When will paper really die?" It's a valid concern, and a question no one can answer with a timetable. But there will be a point--and I believe in our lifetime--when we'll see the demise of the traditional print newspaper. After all, paper is just a device. It provides a way to communicate information, just as a TV, radio, cell phone, and billboard do. This isn't to say that newspapers will go away. The way they are delivered will just change, and in turn, the narrative as we know it will have to adapt--more on this in a later post. But paper can easily be replaced--and the factor that will drive this is simple economics.

Let's put books and magazines aside for a moment, and focus on newsprint. The cost of printing a national newspaper like the Wall Street Journal is close to $150k a day. That's just for the newsprint. When you factor in printing plant rental or ownership fees, machine maintenance, shipping, and wages for plant employees, drivers, and packers, the final cost is hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Now if you have an average of 1,000,000 subscribers to the newspaper on a daily basis (this is a rounded-down average of a few top papers) and you stopped printing the paper, but instead gave your readers an eReader at $200 apiece, it would take fewer than six months for you to recoup your costs. If you factor back in books and magazines, people who read more than one newspaper a day, and throw in the odd journal or two, you've got a multi-billion dollar industry that could collectively save billions of dollars a year by moving away from ink on paper.

But there are problems associated with this model. There's the environmental effect--devices may not be as benign as they seem, after the impact of manufacturing, materials, and shipping is considered. There's a human cost--people who print and deliver the paper would lose their jobs. There are the immense difficulties of advertising on small, different-sized devices--do advertisers create one ad at one size, or many different ones, do they animate, etc. And then there's the issue that you have to treat the device with care, something you don't need to do with paper.

But for every argument against digital paper, eInk or whatever you want to call it, there is a rebuttal, or at least there will be over time. The simple fact that an eInk device today can carry a thousand books and that it only needs recharging once a month speaks paramount. The ability to download content over the air instantly--something that the "digital native" generation fully expects--is compelling. And as far as cost goes, this will be a non-issue in the coming years. Look at the cost of a 15 Megabyte hard drive 20-plus years ago, it was $2495! Today, you couldn't buy or find that size hard drive anywhere, and if you could it would cost mere pennies to create. I'm willing to bet that the cost of an eInk device will be negligible in 20 years.

A common response to the prospect of an eReader is, "But I love the feel of paper, I love a good book in my hands." I can empathize with that sentiment, but I don't think the digital generation can. If it's not a touch screen, or hyperlinked, or instantly available at the press of a button, then it's not worth their time. And as soon as a reasonable iPod-like replacement comes along, paper won't be worth the publishing industry's time either.

eink, etech, nytimes, web20

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The Connected Economy

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:49:03 +0800

Nat Torkington 2008-10-08

As the financial markets battle the fallout of years of poorly regulated unwise greed, the language of analysis is revealing. Commentators talk of "contagion spreading", financial "gears jammed", and "turbulent" markets. This is the language of non-obvious connection, where it's theoretically possible but impossible in practice to predict the future state.

Listening to This American Life's new episode on the spreading financial market failures brought this home. It talked about Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and how hedge funds would both buy and sell these so that they were making money from the interest even as their clients were covering each other's principals. This worked fine for a while, but because hedge funds were each others' clients there arose these long lines of dependencies—if A failed to pay B, then B couldn't pay C, who couldn't pay D, and so on. When the markets started to choke on rotting mortgages, the CDS chains began to unravel.

The CDS game was a bugger because it was easy to check one fund's books and say "yes, we are covered". But there was no way to identify these chains of dependency: the connections between funds were invisible. And, as it turned out, the connections between funds were so much more impotant. Just as one person dying isn't as important as the fact that they can infect others, so too one hedge fund going belly up wouldn't have been anything like the disaster of the dependencies. With globalisation, these connections can span markets, borders, currencies, and languages.

This newly-realized importance of the network reminds me of biology, where we thought we could understand an organism by mapping its genes. Now we realize an organism is a complex mixture of manufactured and transformed chemicals and even other organisms, and the genetic blueprint is necessary but not sufficient for understanding. You can no more understand how an organism works by reading its DNA than you can understand how San Francisco works by reading its phonebook. This "whole organism" multi-level integrative approach is called systems biology.

Nodes often aren't as important as the connections between them. Reductionist science and analysis from the 19th and 20th centuries focused on nodes. I believe 21st century science, economics, political science, and computer science will use more complex systems theory to understand the interactions between chemicals, speculators, nations, and users.

Social network mining, exemplified by Duncan Watts' six degrees work, is just the tip of the iceberg. I think this kind of modern network analysis can make the world a safer place, our futures more secure, and even our bodies more comprehensible. In 100 years time, historians will say that this century's Einstein, Watson, Crick, and Feynman were students of network analysis, and that this was the Connected Century.

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Mobile Advertising: You're Doing It Wrong(移动平台广告：你现在的做法错了)

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:09:43 +0800

Nat Torkington 2008-10-07

Don't miss this great post by Chris Heathcote deconstructing Google's first steps into map advertising on the web and mobile map apps. There's still some usability and use-case work to be done, but it's interesting to see their initial take. As many people have predicted, text ads are difficult to make work on the mobile screen; in Chris's words, "On the web, a banner is 1-5% of the page; on a mobile it’s close to 30%". Chris doesn't feel Google has the problem solved yet (and, in fairness, I doubt Google does either).

You're Doing It Wrong

翻译：xiaochong

一定要读读Chris Heathcore解读Google着手Web和移动平台地图应用中地图广告的文章。还有一些可用性和使用方面的工作要做，但看到他们迈出第一步就非常有趣。正如很多人预见的，文字广告在手机屏幕上效果很不好；用Chris的话讲“在Web上，一个横幅广告在页面的1%-5%；而在手机上几乎占到30%”。Chris不认为Google已经解决了这些问题（我也怀疑）。

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Effect of the Depression on Technology（大萧条对技术有哪些影响？）

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:21:23 +0800

Nat Torkington 2008-10-07

Here's the state of play as I see it: it is expensive and difficult to borrow and this shows no sign of change; the US debt is rising instead of falling, propelled by the Iraq War and the reliance on China for material goods unreciprocated by a reliance from China on American goods; and this adds up to difficult times for business in America for at least three years and possibly longer. From these premises, it's possible to cautiously guess at what the future will hold. (Bearing in mind that every day brings new revelations about the grim state of world finance, so the crystal ball is murky at best)

First, this recession will be good for innovation because recessions generally are. During boom times, companies direct development and occupy great talent with at best evolutionary improvements over the state of the art. Companies are great chasers of new things, but aren't great at making new things. A recession means technologists cease to be paid vast amounts to duplicate the work of others. The Great Tech Bust of Ought Two gave us 37Signals, Flickr, and del.icio.us and there's a strong argument to be made that many companies spent the next six years chasing what they created.

Second, this recession will be great for free and open source because of the shortage of cash. Last recession saw the mainstream legitimisation of open source operating systems (youngsters, take note: there was a time when it wasn't automatically okay for an IT department to use Linux) because it was clear and away the most cost-effective choice. The saying I use is, "come for the price, stay for the quality". Perhaps this recession will legitimise many of the applications (CRM, finance, etc.) higher up the stack. (However, I'm not about to stick my neck out and predict 2009 as The Year of the Linux Desktop)

Third, open source services and cloud computing will benefit from the tight financial situation where conditions will favour opex and not capex. It wil be nigh impossible to borrow to buy hardware or a major software license. An open source software product is free to get through the door, and services around it are delivered from opex not capex. Similarly, cloud computing lets a company pay a little to use someone else's enormous capital investment. It looks like, if the rumours are true, Microsoft will launch Windows Cloud just in time. Don't expect to see anyone else putting in new data centres any time soon—in fact, the days of deep-pocketed investors covering high burn rates are over for a while.

Most consumer apps will be a harder sell with the US dollar in the gutter while the country haemorrhages cash overseas. This is bad but won't make profit impossible, you just have to really be making something consumers need. Apps like Wesabe might find a whole new audience in a recession (disclaimer: O'Reilly is an investor in Wesabe). The conditions don't suit speculative acquisitions, so expect a return to the focus on the bottom line that (very briefly) characterised the fallout from the '01 tech bust. Sorry, dreams of getting people to pay for your toothpick collector social network may have to wait until the return of the stupid money in 2013.

As Phil Torrone said, people will have more time than money. This is good for open source software, but also for hardware and Make-style reconnection with the objects around us. The low-cost high-impact physical events we've created (Ignite, hacker meetups, coworking spaces, foo/bar camps) will thrive even as big-ticket conferences feel the effects of pinched pennies. The killer app in the "web meets world" space may just come from a Maker with spare time who sees a great need.

That's how I see the world and what I think it might favour and disadvantage. How do you see it? What am I missing? Share your views in the comments, and a Head First SQL fridge magnet set for the commenter whom I find the most insightful.

翻译：xiaochong

我对目前局势的看法是：借款变得非常昂贵和困难，而且没有任何有好转的迹象；美国的债务不降反升，再加上伊拉克战争和对中国原材料产品的不匹配的依赖；这一切给美国企业带来至少三年的困难时期，也许会更久。基于这些前提我们可以谨慎地预测一下未来。（请注意现在每天都有关于目前世界金融危机的新情况，所以水晶球还很不明朗。）

首先，这种经济衰退对创新是有好处的。在经济好的时候企业大力开发，雇佣最优秀的人才，推进技术发展水平。公司更善于追逐新事物，但未必善于创造新事物。经济不景气时技术人员不会再像好的时候那样报酬丰厚地在公司里互相重复地忙碌着。科技泡沫带给我们37Signals、Flickr、del.icio.us，很多公司花费了六年时间来追逐这些新事物。

第二，这种不景气由于现金的短缺对自由和开源软件有好处。上一次经济衰退我们看到开源操作系统确立了主流地位（年轻人请记住：IT部门使用Linux可不是天生就这样的），因为这是成本最佳的选择。我总是这样讲“因为价格试了试，由于品质喜欢上了”。本次不景气有可能让更多应用（CRM、金融等等）更上一层楼。（不过我不会预言2009年将成为Linux桌面年。）

第三，开源服务和云计算将从这种紧缩的金融形势下获益，目前形势更适合收益性支出而不是资本性支出。花钱购买硬件或软件许可将变得几乎不可能。开源软件产品使用是免费的，其相关的服务也是属于收益性支出，不是资本性支出。同样道理云计算让企业在花费很少的情况下使用其他人巨大的资本投入。如果真如传言所言，微软件将会发布Windows Cloud。别再指望有人近期会投资建设新的数据中心了——实际上有钱的投资人到处烧钱的日子一段时间内不复存在了。

很多消费应用的销售将变得更艰难。情况很糟不过也不是完全没可能盈利，你必须能真正提供客户需要的产品。像Wesabe这样的应用就有可能在萧条的时候找到新的用户群体（O'Reilly是Wesabe投资人之一）。这种局势不再适合投机并购，要把重点放在2001年网络泡沫时类似的底线上。梦想着让用户为你的社交网络付费怕是要等到2013年傻钱回来的时候了。

正如Phil Torrone所言人们将会有和钱相比更多的时间。这对可源软件有利，对硬件以及Make式的DIY运动也是如此。我们创办的一些低成本高效果的活动（Ignite、骇客集会、coworking space、foo/bar训练营）会大行其道，一些昂贵的会议则会感到冬天的寒冷。这次“Web拥抱世界”上的王牌节目就有可能是来自Maker，他有业余时间，找到了客户的需求。

这是我的观点，经济衰退带来的正面的和负面的影响。你怎么看？我漏掉什么了？在讨论中和大家分享你的看法，我会送给最富洞察力的评论者一套Head First SQL冰箱贴。

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Web 2.0 Expo CFP Extended One-Day; Now Closes 10/9

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:49:02 +0800

Brady Forrest 2008-10-07

Because of the emails, IMs, and phone calls asking about late submissions to Web 2.0 Expo SF we've decided to leave the CFP open an extra day. So if you wish to speak you'll be glad to know that the CFP for Web 2.0 Expo SF will be open until October 9th.

We use this Call For Participation to find speakers for our sessions and tutorials. With the of help our committee, my co-chair Jen Pahlka and I select the content that will best service the attendees. Your submission should clearly answer the following questions: "How will this session will benefit the attendee?", "What will they learn?" and "Why are you the person to speak on it?". Including a brief outline of your talk shows us you've thought this through. These are the tracks we are trying to fill (with an abbreviated set of questions):

Main Conference Tracks (approximately 13 sessions each)

Strategy & Business Models
What are the critical and key strategies for building Web 2.0 businesses, platforms and business models? What should attendees be preparing for during the downturn? How can they compete in Asia and European markets?
Marketing & Community How can a company best use its web marketing dollars? What's the best and most manageable way of using social media to interact with your customers? What's the latest magic behind SEO and SEM? How can you protect your brand online?

Design & User Experience

How do we bring the skills that have served us well for the past several years to mobile devices? How do the expectations of your users change when they're interacting with you on the go? How do you meet -- if not exceed them? This track looks at the technical concepts, process innovations, design patterns, and frameworks that inform today's web applications, from the perspective of user experience and interaction design.

Fundamentals

We'll discuss the state of the art and the relevant open questions around the building blocks of Web 2.0: user-generated content, tagging, collective intelligence, co-development with your users, licensing, policy, identity, trust, transparency and data ownership and access. This track is designed to help those newer to the Web 2.0 understand how to bring the core concepts of Web 2.0 together to deliver a great web application.

Development

The Web has shown us a new way of building and releasing software. Moving at lightspeed is expected. Lightweight frameworks with support for standards and interactivity are the chosen weapons of the day. This track is for experienced programmers looking to improve their understanding of the technical ecosystem --what's baked now and what's lurking below the radar.

Focus Tracks (approximately 5 sessions each))

Web Operations
Web Operations are critical to every organization that depends on the web for revenue. Sessions will cover infrastructure automation, scaling Rails and LAMP stacks, virtualization and cloud computing, caching, load balancing, monitoring, and more.
Mobile
The mobile web has been been undergoing a dramatic evolution, with the prevalence of the iPhone, Android and forthcoming Blackberry platforms. This track looks at the technical, business, design and marketing aspects of mobile web applications.
Security
It should be no surprise that as Web 2.0 hits the mainstream, security issues move into the spotlight. This track looks at technical, design and business aspects of security, from the assumption that true security is not a question of code alone.
Entertainment
Games, videos, and other digital content are finding forms of expression as media mash up, brands become content providers, and the social web looks more and more like a big game every day. With unparalleled engagement and monetization metrics, what do other Web 2.0 developers have to learn from the innovators in the online entertainment space?

Looking for other way's to participate? This year's Expo we will be reprising the Web2Open (our onsite unconference) and Launchpad (a startup judging contest). More details for each program will come later.

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