The technology, culture and business of the web
“INNOVATION usually needs time to steep. Time to turn the idea into something tangible, time to get it to market, time for people to decide they accept it. Speech recognition technology has steeped for a long time: Mike Phillips remembers that in the 1980s, when he was a Carnegie Mellon graduate student trying to develop rudimentary speech recognition systems, “it seemed almost impossible.”
Now, devices that incorporate speech recognition are starting to hit the mass market, thanks to entrepreneurs like Mr. Phillips. He is the chief technology officer and a co-founder of the Vlingo Corporation, an 18-month-old start-up in Cambridge, Mass., that is selling services to cellular carriers and other software companies that want to give their customers the ability to let their mouths do the walking — and the searching.”
Read more at nytimes.com
The following is an excerpt from “Burden’s Wheel,” the first chapter of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, which is being published today by W. W. Norton & Company.
“At a conference in Paris during the summer of 2004, Apple introduced an updated version of its popular iMac computer. Since its debut in 1998, the iMac had always been distinguished by its unusual design, but the new model was particularly striking. It appeared to be nothing more than a flat-panel television, a rectangular screen encased in a thin block of white plastic and mounted on an aluminum pedestal. All the components of the computer itself – the chips, the drives, the cables, the connectors – were hidden behind the screen. The advertising tagline wittily anticipated the response of prospective buyers: ‘Where did the computer go?’
But the question was more than just a cute promotional pitch. It was, as well, a subtle acknowledgment that our longstanding idea of a computer is obsolete. While most of us continue to depend on personal computers both at home and in the office, we’re using them in a very different way than we used to. Instead of relying on data and software that reside inside our computers, inscribed on our private hard drives, we increasingly tap into data and software that stream through the public Internet. Our PCs are turning into terminals that draw most of their power and usefulness not from what’s inside them but from the network they’re hooked up to – and, in particular, from the other computers that are hooked up to that network.
The change in the way we use computers didn’t happen overnight. Primitive forms of centralized computing have been around for a long time. In the mid-1980s, many early PC owners bought modems to connect their computers over phone lines to central databases like Compuserve, Prodigy, and the Well – commonly known as ‘bulletin boards’ – where they exchanged messages with other subscribers. America Online popularized this kind of online community, greatly expanding its appeal by adding colorful graphics as well as chat rooms, games, weather reports, magazine and newspaper articles, and many other services. Other, more specialized databases were also available to scholars, engineers, librarians, military planners, and business analysts. When, in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, he set the stage for the replacement of all those private online data stores with one vast public one. The Web popularized the Internet, turning it into a global bazaar for sharing digital information. And once easy-to-use browsers like Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer became widely available in the mid-1990s, we all went online in droves.”
Read more at roughtype.com
“When it comes to the Google search box, you already know the tricks: finding exact phrases matches using quotes like “so say we all” or searching a single site using site:lifehacker.com gmail. But there are many more oblique, clever, and lesser-known search recipes and operators that work from that unassuming little input box. Dozens of Google search guides detail the tips you already know, but today we’re skipping the obvious and highlighting our favorite obscure Google web search tricks.”
Read more at lifehacker.com.
Deloitte & Touche survey looks at advertising potential of web, television, and mobile devices
“A survey conducted by Deloitte & Touche shows that of 2,081 consumers questioned, 38% watch television shows online, while 36% use their cell phones as entertainment devices, and 45% are creating online content such as websites, videos and blogs. The study, which was conducted between October 25-31 for American consumers, aims to look at the advertising potential of the web, television, and mobile devices.
Deloitte & Touche conducted the same survey between February 23 and March 6, 2007. The results indicate that there’s a steady growth in usage across the three sectors looked at, with varying increases depending on age demographics. Consumers age 25-41 saw the largest increase for mobile entertainment use, up 47%, while those in the 13-24 age bracket saw a similar 46% increase.”
Read more at mashable.com
Is Google a model internet company — or an anomaly?
“This decade’s most remarkable business story has been the rise of Google from the dot-com ashes. The company didn’t even exist 10 years ago — it was incorporated by its founders, Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, on September 7, 1998 — but it is today a juggernaut that is as feared as it is admired. The company’s growth has been dizzying, its revenues shooting up from less than US$500 million in 2002 to more than $10.5 billion in 2006. And despite a prolonged hiring binge, an aggressive acquisition program, and a multibillion-dollar investment in building data centers, Google remains robustly profitable, earning a net income of $2 billion on $7.5 billion of sales through the first half of 2007. Since the company’s initial public offering in August 2004, its stock price has risen fivefold.”
Read more at strategy-business.com
While I’m out of the office the development site has moved to http://rady.landermedia.com/. The home page is complete, as is the MBA home page and the FlexMBA section (no photos yet).
Happy Holidays!
It’s rough around the edges, content is missing, and most of the links aren’t working, but for those of us in the trenches it’s a proud moment: the demo of Rady v4 is live! Well, at least the home page is.
Check it out at http://rady.ucsd.edu/dev/v4/.
