Just delivered the opening keynote for the Government 2.0 LA conference. This talk was the most fun that I’ve had in a while, both because of the engaged and active audience who interrupted with lots of questions and because pulling the talk together required a bunch of research and exploration.
I first heard the story of Matthew Fontaine Maury from Professor Doctor Herbert Burket. The more I learned about Maury, the more I thought I could build a Government 2.0 discussion around his story of transforming navigation and the collection of global meteorological data.
What makes Maury’s story so interesting is in the mid-1800’s he was able to build a multinational, viral, crowdsourced, and meta-data system. His approaches and techniques are exactly the same as Google and other Web 2.0 companies from 150 years later. Even better, he did it all from within an institution — the United States Navy — not necessarily known for innovative and original thinking. His story also perfectly illustrates four tools that government has available to drive change: data, regulation, bully pulpit, and commercial excitement. Even better, Maury’s story connects the California gold rush, the Cape Horn Sweepstakes, and the amazing achievements of Eleanor Cressy and the Flying Cloud.
It all makes for a nice reminder that if history doesn’t repeat, it certain rhymes and there are lessons to be learned from the rhyming.
Cory Ondrejka Government 2.0 LA Opening Keynote
So, the Macmillan books are back. I was going to write about poorly Amazon handled this, but John Scalzi has done an infinitely better job.
The interesting thing about the fans of authors: They feel somewhat connected to their favorite authors. So when their favorite authors kvetched on their blogs and Facebook pages and Twitter feeds about the screwing Amazon was giving them, what did many of these fans do? They also kvetched on their blogs and Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. So in pissing off a myriad of authors, Amazon also pissed off an exponential number of book readers, many of whom followed their favorite authors’ leads in complaining about Amazon, and who themselves were read and followed by an exponential number of others. Even on a weekend, the traditional slow time for the Internets, that’s a lot of pissed-off people.Sunday, January 31, 2010
So, two and a half days of the Internet being angry at Amazon. To be sure, there were people taking the side of Amazon, too. But those people lacked the social cohesion of an aggrieved class (writers) backed up by a mass of supporters — not to mention the relatively high profile of these writers online, which, if you were a journalist looking for reaction quotes while on deadline, made them the go-to sources.
While I spent the weekend in Las Vegas with some friends for a honest-its-not-really-a-bachelor-party (some poker thoughts to come), the blogosphere has been vibrating to the news that Amazon has decided to stop selling all Macmillan titles, both physical and digital, over a pricing dispute with Macmillan. Let us accept as given nobody outside the negotiation knows all the details, but the current consensus version of the story is:
At the iPad announcement, Steve Jobs mentioned in an interview that Amazon and Apple book prices would be same, at a rumored $14.99 price point — which is $5 more than Amazon’s price
The day after iPad’s announcement, Macmillan proposed a new variable pricing scheme, with digital titles launching at $14.99 and then declining to $5.99
Amazon responded to this pricing demand by pulling all of Macmillan’s titles
Odd twists here. Apple only recently announced variable pricing on mp3 downloads via the iTunes Music Store. Amazon famously built its mp3 business on DRM-free music when iTunes was selling AAC with digital rights management. John Scalzi is one of may authors to weigh in.
Amazon, of course, claims they are doing this for the customer, but as a customer who has been annoyingly positive about Kindle for years, a point of order.
I like variable pricing.
Hell, I love variable pricing.
More to the point, I really love Baen’s variable pricing, where ebook prices run from $15 for advanced reader copies all the way down to free. This model is fantastic. New release from author I read everything by? Great, order the e-arc and get to read it months ahead of time. More of a “maybe I’ll like this”-release? Get it via webscriptions for somewhere between $1-5. Taking a complete flyer on a new author? Read something of their’s in the free library.
Oh, and did I mention all of Baen’s releases are DRM-free? This makes them approximately 186,282% cooler than Kindle DRM-ed books and is why Baen’s Universe has received so many thousands of dollars from me. Of course, apparently I was the only one doing this as Universe is closing, but I doubt this is a failing of variable pricing.
Obviously, Macmillan’s model is not this cool. Instead, it just transliterates from the physical model of hardcover and softcover releases into digital. Like so many areas of publishing, it leaves money on the table and doesn’t actually seem to leverage the differences of digital very effectively.
But, it still means that if I’m willing to wait and surf the back catalog, I can get a discount compared to new releases.
So, Amazon, as a customer and Kindle owner who’s purchasd 88 books for Kindle in 15-months, are you going to listen?
Who knew? Today is International Privacy Day — probably not created by Hallmark. In celebration, Google decided to renew its privacy vows:
Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services.
Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.
Make the collection of personal information transparent.
Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy.
Be a responsible steward of the information we hold.
Read in the light of my earlier post on this topic, a couple of issues jump out.
If Google wants to couch this in terms of personal information and truly wants to make the collection transparent, they’d will need to make all of their data collection transparent. All information is ultimately going to be personally identifiable — and therefore potentially private form a user’s perspective. Are they ready to do this?
“Meaningful choices” is going to be a huge challenge. First, given Moore’s Law, we don’t have a useful framework for talking about private or personal data. Second, even given a framework, teaching users about complicated and ephemeral concepts is difficult. On the plus side, we can look at Creative Commons for some guidance on how to approach education.
I would propose some necessary but (perhaps) not sufficient conditions for me to make a meaningful choice about data collection. Answer:
What data is being collected?
How long the data will be retained?
How will the data be shared?
What datasets the data will be aggregated with?
Context for how the data will be used — will it be aggregated across other data sources related to me? aggregated across other users? used to optimize services I have opted in to? to advertise to me?
Can I opt-out at a later date?
What is the impact of opting out now?
Presenting this information is going to be user-experience nightmare, but without it, informed consent is at best a polite fiction.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010Oh, the highs and the lows. Nothing could possibly have lived up to the hype, excitement, and rumors that have been swirling around the long-rumored-but-now-real Apple iPad. Tech Crunch has already decreed the iPad a dud:
I mean, I already did a whole spiel on CNN (what?!) why the iPad is sorta “meh” in my eyes, but to recap: I simply don’t get it. It’s not an iPhone replacement because it’s not a phone (duh); it’s not an iPod touch replacement because it’s not portable; and I already have enough “real” computers that I don’t need a tablet.
Engadget is decidedly luke warm, while Gizmodo posted 8 Things that Suck About iPad:
A lot of people at Gizmodo are psyched about the iPad. Not me! My god, am I underwhelmed by it. It has some absolutely backbreaking failures that will make buying one the last thing I would want to do.
Once you get over the iJesusPadTablet and the epic MadTV skit, there is some very interesting stuff going one with the iPad.
First, as Gruber already nailed, Apple building custom silicon for this device is a sea change in terms of optimizing performance for the product. In a lot of ways, this is back to the glory days of 80’s and early 90’s arcade development, where the game design and hardware were developed together. It made life hell for the poor saps trying to port your games to a SNES, but it meant the arcade games always blew the home market away. Then the arcade business started crashing and developers switched to commodity PC hardware or modified consumer hardware like the PSX and arcade games weren’t special anymore. Suddenly your home rig played the best games. Mobile computing was stuck in the same, commoditized rut. Until today. Wonder how long until that chip makes it into the iPhone. Or the next MacBook Air.
Second, the design. Get over the bezel, folks. Where the hell are you supposed to hold a one and a half pound device? You don’t want your thumbs in front of content, accidentally generating inputs all the time. Get over the lack of wide screen, too. This isn’t just designed to be movie player, you want to be able to surf the web in portrait mode and that would stink if it was 16×9. Instead, we see Apple’s first cut at a mobile computer that you sit around with, with a host of intelligent decisions made around that use case. You will lounge with iPad — maybe we’ll see a resurgence in beanbag sales. The design of the iPad — much like the Kindle — makes you treat technology like a book, something you cozy up to.
Third, battery life for a mobile device. No, 10 hours isn’t my Kindle
Fourth, unlimited 3G for $30, without a contract. While not quite as good as Kindle’s free Whispernet, this is still dramatically cheaper than what we’ve seen before.
Fifth, iPad is a ridiculously cool game machine.
Sixth, however good it might be as a game machine, it crushes as a textbook and education tool. For all of Kindle’s strengths, pdfs are still often fubared even on the DX and search/annotation doesn’t play well with e-ink. iPad becomes an extra screen for reference books while coding, will properly render pdf papers, and can be stuffed full of specialized apps for education.
Finally, lots of people are spouting about how this doesn’t replace a netbook for web browsing, but I’m not so sure. Making the intangible tangible — which the iPhone did and now the iPad does via high performance and multi-touch — changes how we engage and interact with media. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if tactile browsing is crushingly better than keyboard + mouse, and given how much of our day is spent on the web, something that makes that more fun is a big deal. Even better for the web, the iPad is a seriously big deal for HTML5 + javascript projects. Suddenly you have an always connected, full screen device with seriously high performance and HTML5 compliant browsing.
So, pundits be damned, I’ll be ordering one the day I can. I am worried about the virtual keyboard, but willing to chance it. I think the iPad will slot in quite nicely between my iPhone and MacBook Air, be a much better fit for light browsing and writing tasks when traveling, and would fit my presentation style. Looking forward to building and presenting a keynote on one!
