Month: October 2010

The Mac As Just Another i-Screen in an iWorld. NO THANKS.

Today Apple announced a move that, on first blush, seems to push the Mac, its seminal and defining product, into the iWorld. You know, the world of Apple-controlled, closed, manicured gardens a la iPhone, iPod, iPad, and iTunes. There's going to be an "app store" for Macs, and the iPad…

wired-pray.gifToday Apple announced a move that, on first blush, seems to push the Mac, its seminal and defining product, into the iWorld. You know, the world of Apple-controlled, closed, manicured gardens a la iPhone, iPod, iPad, and iTunes.

There’s going to be an “app store” for Macs, and the iPad OS is going to be integrated in the next release of the Mac.

If anything, ever, will make me leave Mac for good (and the companies I’ve started have purchased literally thousands of them), it will be the integration of the Mac OS into Steve Jobs’ vision of where mobile is going.

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The Points of Control Map: Now an Acquisition Game – Check It Out

As you know, part of visualizing the them for this year's Web 2 Summit included a map I dreamt up with a crew of possibly inebriated fellow travelers. I've been really pleased with the response to the maps' first iteration – we're closing in on nearly 100K unique visitors who…

Screen shot 2010-10-13 at 7.52.40 PM.pngAs you know, part of visualizing the them for this year’s Web 2 Summit included a map I dreamt up with a crew of possibly inebriated fellow travelers. I’ve been really pleased with the response to the maps’ first iteration – we’re closing in on nearly 100K unique visitors who have spent nearly six minutes each playing with the maps various features, which include two levels of detail, threaded location-specific commenting, and a cool visualization of key Internet players’ moves into competitive territories.

But when I brainstormed the map, I always wanted one feature that was a bit difficult to execute: Acquisition Mode. In the Internet Economy, there are there those who acquire, and those who dream of being acquired. This has always been so, but in the past few years it’s been less so. My sense is that is about to change.

To that end, we’ve added a layer to the map that allows anyone to suggest an acquisition, anywhere on the map – and it also allows us to vote for those ideas. My goal is a heat map of acquisitions, a collective intelligence layer, if you will, over the chess moves companies small and large are making in the battle to control key areas across the map.

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Mayer to Location: Big.

Today I was in a meeting with a number of consultants to a very large technology company. Their job: market research, essentially. They called to ask me my thoughts on the media and technology world, in particular as it might play out in the next five or so years….

marissa-mayer.jpg

Today I was in a meeting with a number of consultants to a very large technology company. Their job: market research, essentially. They called to ask me my thoughts on the media and technology world, in particular as it might play out in the next five or so years. They were responsible for helping the Fortune 50 company navigate an increasingly complicated world.

I love these kind of free association tasks, because while it’s not easy to be right, it’s also pretty easy to not be wrong if the questions are smart. I’ve been a student of technology cycles for a couple of decades, and often times what’s directly in front of you is, in fact, the next big thing.

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“Digital Birth” – By Age 2, 92% of Kids Have an “Online Record”

(image) I'm fascinated by the tracks we leave online, and their implications both in real time (better search results, real time advertising ecosystems, new forms of social behavior etc) and in the long view. Those of you who read my book may recall my epilog, where I opined on…

baby online.jpeg

(image) I’m fascinated by the tracks we leave online, and their implications both in real time (better search results, real time advertising ecosystems, new forms of social behavior etc) and in the long view. Those of you who read my book may recall my epilog, where I opined on the concept of immortality through the Database of Intentions.

This study (via CNet) is fascinating – it shows that nearly every kid in the US has an online record by age two, thanks to parents posting pictures. What I’d really like to see is how many grandparents are online. I sense my father’s generation is on the bubble – some percentage of them appear when one searches for their names, but a larger percentage does not. They are the final generation of non digital natives, and it’s really only pointing one way in the future – more and more of our lives exist online, and more and more of our social assumptions about who we are and what our value is will as well.

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Facebook Addresses Instrumentation & Trust – Goal: Win In the “Non Facebook Web”

Today Facebook made several announcements that begin to address key issues I've written about many times: With "New Groups" the company is providing a more nuanced instrumentation of your social graph, and with "Download Your Information" Facebook is addressing issues of both lock-in and the "Data Bill of Rights." You…

63999_492208846728_20531316728_6755172_4414657_n.jpgToday Facebook made several announcements that begin to address key issues I’ve written about many times: With “New Groups” the company is providing a more nuanced instrumentation of your social graph, and with “Download Your Information” Facebook is addressing issues of both lock-in and the “Data Bill of Rights.”

You can read all about the news at other sites, but here are the basics: Through a new groups feature, Facebook is allowing its members to share information with selected subsets of friends. This is an issue that was widely discussed after Google engineer Paul Adams called Facebook out on it back in July.

Facebook also announced a service that lets you download “everything you’ve ever posted on Facebook and all your correspondences with friends: your messages, Wall posts, photos, status updates and profile information.” As the blog post continues:

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