It is getting a little old hearing the techie community continue to gripe over and over again about the terms Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. If you are privy to such discussions or complaints, just about every argument that makes sense boils down to one thing: “Why is everyone calling it Web 2.0? There isn’t any such thing as a new version of the web. The underlying technology hasn’t changed for years. We can do the same things we could always do. Why is everyone being so naive and calling this ‘new wave’ of technology that has been around for many years something like Web 2.0, making it sound new and shiny? They [the marketing people and business community that coined Web 2.0 and use it daily] are so [insert nerdy insult here]!” - I can say things like ‘nerdy insult’, because I myself am a nerd, and embrace that fact with zeal.

To be honest, this position isn’t completely unfounded, because the facts are correct. Nothing has truly changed in the way the web actually works. I won’t waste time explaining why this is true, the explanation would put even some of the loyalist Trekkies to sleep.

The irony is that the argument itself presents a position as naive as the use of a term like Web 2.0. What makes this term, and others like it so necessary, is that by a generally widely accepted rule, those who make and understand technology can rarely explain that same technology to someone who isn’t technology inclined, and it is even more rare that they can actually sell it.

Techies are into details, and they have a terrible time selling ideas in terms that make business sense. To that end, techies are their own worst enemy. Generally a sarcastic and critical crowd, techies are doomed to look arrogantly down upon any jargon that doesn’t state exactly what they think is the true meaning of an idea, while ironically creating the need for such jargon by their own inability (and sometimes proud refusal) to communicate with a different vocabulary.

When O’Reilly Media introduced the term to the world in 2004, it gave some shape (vague as it was) to the ideas that were the genius of the dot-bombs and the future of business investment online. It abstracted a bunch of existing (and in some cases ancient) applications of web technology to a high enough level that decision makers could finally get on board. It’s a lot like the references to human generations we have created. We’ve had the Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y… We are all still human with the same DNA, but they have figured out characteristics that can be generalized about each generation. Web 2.0 encapsulated conceptual use of technology towards social networking, collaboration, richer UI interactions, etc.

In conclusion, Web 2.0 exists because it sells. Screaming from the top of a building that the web has been, still is, and will be for a long time nothing more than simple data transmitted by packet switching enabled by HTTP over TCP/IP only puts people to sleep. Web 3.0 exists and will continue to exist because Web 2.0 sold, and the model seems to have legs at this point. And every techie that complains about it is more than likely complaining about a term that probably directly or indirectly saved or created their job.

You may or may not have noticed the recent buzz about Adobe releasing their first non-Beta version of their latest product Adobe Air. The interesting thing is that (in my opinion) Adobe doesn’t do a great job giving any business benefits that the new product brings to the table. And they use way too many buzzwords without any tangible application.

From the product home page:

Business Benefits
Adobe AIR offers an exciting new way to engage customers with innovative, branded desktop applications, without requiring changes to existing technology, people, or processes.

Haven’t we heard this before in various forms? Many times? And they don’t seem to do a much better job on the next page with their expanded explanation.

Adobe Air seems to be a natural evolution of Flash. Flash has served to solve two primary problems with the web (each ultimately associated with cost):

1. The browser wars can make creating Rich Internet Applications very expensive. Basically because you have to test the application and possibly make adjustments/fixes for every browser type and version that you want to support. So, if you want to support IE6 and IE7 on Windows XP and Windows Vista, you need to test the entire application or website 4 times if you want to be sure everything works and looks perfect. This can be very expensive. Flash solved this problem by delivering content through a plug-in, that allowed all Flash applications to look and act the same, regardless of browser, without the need of extra work per browser.
2. The existing standards for HTML/CSS/Javascript make creating and maintaining applications that have the interactivity and experience that you see in today’s best Flash websites and applications very expensive. Flash solved this problem by providing creative and development resources that were previously unavailable.

However, the Flash product is currently tailored to work in a web browser, with all of the assumptions and limitations that would come with that delivery mechanism. One primary limitation is that it is very hard to store very much data on a computer, creating a need to stay connected to the Internet to retrieve and store data.

This is where Adobe Air fits in. It is positioned to solve this last problem, by leveraging the existing technology that solved the first two. The other benefits that Adobe Air is, positioned to carry are, in my opinion, overstated since they are already addressed by many other technologies.

Ironically, Summers Pittman presented a fantastic business case for a product like Adobe Air in a recent blog post (before the Adobe Air press release hit the web, so Adobe Air wasn’t mentioned in the post). In short, he presented a real life (and very common) situation where he finds himself away from Internet connectivity with the need to work with Google documents and spreadsheets. The problem with this is that you can’t currently make changes to and create new Google documents without an Internet connection. And this is the same problem with 99% of all web applications. This is the problem that Adobe Air is positioned to solve.

An example of a Google Docs application using Adobe Air would allow Summers to create new and edit existing Google documents locally on his computer, without an Internet connection. Then, the next time he connects to the Internet, the application will sync his local documents with his documents stored on Google servers. This would reduce any need Summers would have for any other document creation and editing tool that worked offline, like Microsoft Office.

A couple of days ago, I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine about how weird it feels to go on a trip where there is no internet access.  These, of course, are generally trips to see family or friends that put you in a location where getting online is usually not impossible, but a at least a chore, so you wind up doing without for some period of time.  My buddy and I were joking about how it changes the dynamic of conversations, because you can’t just go “Google” something to help resolve a friendly debate, or look up something that you’re trying to figure out.  My friend called it the “third brain” in a conversation.

While most of what we were saying was in jest to some extent, there was obviously some truth to it.  And there was something about that truth that bothered me a bit, and got me to worry a little.  Will the internet affect our ability to critically think for ourselves?

How many times a day/week do you wind up solving a problem by going straight to the internet?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to paint the internet as evil or something harmful.  I’m only curious about what subtle differences in the way I think - or my children think - that it can impose, and what about those differences is healthy or unhealthy.

If more and more problems are solved and those solutions posted online, do I need to find ways to ensure that I maintain my ability to problem solve?  What about my children?

Part of me knows how valuable it is to be able to find a solution online in a matter of seconds instead of taking hours or days to figure it out myself, or even worse taking up several of my peers time and energy as well.  But at the same time, isn’t there usually some intangible benefit to just figuring it for myself?

I can see future households where children are taught to look something up online before they ask their parents.  I can also see a workforce full of people who can’t solve problems without looking up the answers. 

So, I pose the question to readers … is this a problem?

Anyone remember that 2002 Tom Cruise movie The Minority Report? One scene has Tom Cruise frantically running about the city. He eventually walks through some public area where there’s a slew of 3D hologram ads; and they all know his name and turn toward him, trying to sell whatever product they represent. This high-tech advertising is made possible because “in the future” humans have a tracking mechanism implanted in them. These implants can be detected and it seems that certain high-level information is publicly accessible to any system that can detect the implant. This publicly accessible information makes it possible for the ads to respond and adjust on-the-fly to someone just walking by.

Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s what every online advertising mechanism currently tries to do - customizing ads and content with what they know about the user viewing the content. The primary exception is that this ability has mostly been contained to the domain of the website, requiring a profile on that website. This ability to customize advertising to user profiles has been evolving for some time, from customizing ads based on searches (probably the most intelligent customization not requiring profiles) to ads, based on preferences and behaviors in online social networks.

So here comes what feels like another step towards that sci-fi future where no matter where you go or what you are doing, everyone seems to know who you are and how to sell to you.

Google has announced that today they will launch a new set of social networking APIs named OpenSocial. OpenSocial will provide a basic set of functions that will allow developers to access profile information and basic features from any social network that decides to accept the open invitation to play along. A band of existing networks have already backed the platform, including Plaxo, Ning, LinkedIn, Orkut and Friendster.

Google is taking the infamous Google approach to providing such tools:

Part 1) Magnanimously provide a solution that has the intent of making developer’s jobs easier (who currently find themselves having to add another social networking API to their tool belt on a regular basis)

Part 2) Create a more standardized social community so that ads can be delivered across more platforms to more people with more accuracy than ever before so that everyone can make more money (with Google at the center of that exchange)

I have to admit, it will be interesting to see this unravels as the product matures and the powers at be take sides.

Reference Links:

• A draft of the Google news release can be found at here at VentureBeat.
• TechCrunch does a good job of giving a high level summary of what the OpenSocial offering will include out of the gate.
• CNET has a nice article talking about how hairy this approach can get for Google.

I ran across an interesting article listing 10 Gmail interface tweaks available when using Firefox and I found them interesting enough to try out. After installing and testing each script I found a couple of them worth passing on.

These tweaks are actually GreaseMonkey scripts that you install and run in Firefox, and that only run when you are viewing and interacting with Gmail. So, if you aren’t a Firefox user (shame on you!) then this might be a neat introduction into what’s possible with Firefox plug-ins. The article gives a nice description of GreaseMonkey and what it is used for at the top of the list, so no need to repeat that here.

For the most part, I only found a couple of the scripts to be useful to me personally, and are my diamonds in the rough from the article:

#3: Label Folders – This does a fantastic job of displaying sub-labels as drill-down folders making it much easier to find things.

#4: One Click Conversations – I dig the pop-up that this script gives you with some info on the author of the email, and one-click ability to access all emails from the sender.

The others were either useless to me, or I just didn’t like the implementation. For instance, 1, 2, 6 and 8 in the list are just small interface customizations that didn’t really do anything for me, and didn’t seem worth the extra overhead of having to run the script when the page is rendered. These scripts can slow download times significantly depending on which ones you have installed and how many you have installed since each script has to run on page load.

Some people might like number 9 depending on how you use Gmail. This script adds the ability to assign different colors to each label. This can help you pick out particular labels in a list of emails on the screen.

The last one, number 10, provides some keyboard macros for interacting with Gmail, but they conflicted with macros I already had in place from other plug-ins. Assuming you have multiple productivity plug-ins installed you might experience the same thing.

Bonus Tip: Unrelated to Gmail, I discovered this yesterday on the Firefox Blog. You can specify multiple Home Page links in the Firefox options by separating each link with a pipe ‘|’. This will open Firefox with a tab per link. I found this pretty helpful since I usually start each day with a few web-based applications, and don’t typically open that many new instances of Firefox during the day. If you tend to open a new instance of Firefox frequently, this will be a drag because it will open each tab every time.

Enjoy!

Back in June, NBC’s dotcomedy.com launched The Lunch Break Show, a new diversion for those of us that eat at our desk to save time during the day. Arby’s was the sole sponsor and the site is plastered with Arby’s branding and links to their TV commercials. Although it seems to have hit the news release channels back in June, I only recently stumbled across it and found it interesting enough to share the links and some thoughts for any of you who might have missed it the first time around.

The Concept:
The top of the original press release states quite obviously where the idea came from: “According to a recent survey by Kelton Research, nearly 60 percent of office workers in the U.S. spend their lunch breaks at their desks looking for distractions.”

So, it seems that NBC and Arby’s decided to go after this target market by throwing together a 30-minute collection of short segments taken from the previous day’s comedy shows on NBC and inviting office workers to ‘tune in’ between 12:00pm and 2:00 pm to watch the show while eating lunch at their desk.

The Experience:
Open http://www.thelunchbreakshow.com/ in a browser outside the time of 12:00pm - 2:00pm and you will see a page that explains quickly what the show is about and a form to register for email alerts each day before the show begins that only requires a Zip Code and an Email. There is also a countdown to the next show.

Open http://www.thelunchbreakshow.com/ in a browser between 12:00pm - 2:00pm and you will see the video which loops through the 30 minute segment repeatedly, along with a funny little PANIC button.

Thoughts:
I love the idea, it got me interested enough to try it out, but I had some problems with the experience.

Design - I enjoyed the website design and loved the funny little Panic button that pops-up a screen with numbers and lines all over it to make it look like you are doing something important.

Email Reminder - The email comes at 9:30am for me, and there is no way that is going to help me remember the show at lunch. It is buried in my email by that time, and I have to consciously think about the show and go and dig up the email to find the link. (If I haven’t bookmarked or tagged it already)

The Video – The video has some great spots in it each day, and I can always find something to chuckle at. However, you can’t pause it, rewind it, or skip ahead. Here comes the rub. I get what they are trying to do. However, I find it hard to believe that the same people who are clicking around online for entertainment at lunch can’t pause and rewind TV at home with some sort of DVR. I found it very frustrating. A colleague came up to me and asked a question during the show, and I missed something I wanted to hear, and couldn’t pause it or rewind it and I wasn’t about to wait another 30 minutes to catch that segment again.

So to wrap things up, I enjoyed the website and the video, but ultimately got turned off by the lack of ability to interact with the video. I wonder what their drop-off statistics look like because it feels as if they missed the mark a bit on how their demographic would want to interact with the site once they actually got there.

Links:

• To give credit where credit is due, I stumbled across it here at MediaPost in an article that gives a few facts about the campaign.
• The original press release
• Lunch Break Show FAQ

It’s been a while since my last post, mainly because my family has been a bit pre-occupied. My wife and I had our first child on April 7th, a beautiful girl named Brooke.  I could tell instantly that life would never be the same.  I would also like to take this opportunity to praise my wife for everything she went through and continues to go through.  She is an amazingly strong woman, and an incredible partner in life.

In my last post, I referred to the problem of requirements communication on a software production team as the old ‘Telephone Game.’  The basic idea is that all information communicated between two people gets distorted in some way, even when the most careful words are chosen with the best of intentions. I am sure anyone married or in a serious relationship has had some experience with this.  I know my wife and I have.

Her mom was visiting recently to help with the baby and after dinner one night the family was sitting around the table.

“Can you help my mom and I get on the internet?”

Now, I know that my wife knows how to ‘get on the internet.’  She helps me on a daily basis to look things up, do research, and pay bills.  Anyone who knows me here at the office knows that a sentence like the above is fair game.  So, the next few minutes were a lot of fun.  We all had a good laugh.

What she was referring to was that I had purchased a video cam for our home PC, so that when her mother went home to Iowa, she could still see her Grand-daughter whenever she wanted.  In all fairness, what my wife had said wasn’t really incorrect, just incomplete, because they did get on the internet together the next night.

A serious problem with all human communication is that by the time the message is heard and processed by the other person, it has been translated several times. First, you have to translate whatever you are thinking into words.  This represents the first mutation of the message.  You are expressing yourself with the vocabulary that you are comfortable with, and if you are speaking English that vocabulary is full of words that have more than one meaning, more than word that sounds the same, etc.  Next, the words are spoken, which can introduce tone, accents, inappropriate or confusing pauses (ala Captain Kirk), and so forth.  Next the person or persons you are speaking to must then hear those words and will translate them into their own thoughts that represent what you were trying to say.  (I am sure Dr. Melissa Read has a much more scientific explanation for this.)  In my example from home above, you can see how what my wife was thinking wasn’t exactly what she said, and when you read or hear those words, how they can be interpreted as something completely different.

The same problems exist in the written word, with slightly different mutating elements.  The written word can’t accurately express tone, and usually is presented without facial expressions or body language, which are usually imperative in human expression.  One good thing about the written word is that you take time to think before you write, which a lot of people don’t do before they speak, which can lead to big troubles.

I find it interesting when studying communication, that what you learn in one environment is usually applicable in every other environment.  For example, what you learn at home when learning to communicate with your family, you can usually apply at the office, and vice versa.  Understanding that communication isn’t as easy as it may seem and studying where there might be disconnects is important in all walks of life, and is just as important when talking to your spouse as it is when marketing your company to customers.  Over-confidence in the delivery of your message, and assuming that it was understood as intended can lead to a lot of unintended results.  If you are humble enough to study and learn, you will find golden nuggets even in your mistakes.   If you barrel along not taking time to listen to others around you, or to your customers, you’ll wind up out of money and confused.

Do you remember playing the telephone game when you were a kid? I don’t remember it being called the telephone game, but we used to play it around the camp fire. (It’s also called Chinese Whispers.) You’d start by thinking of a phrase, like “Bobby went to the store to get cheese.” Then you would whisper that into the ear of the person next to you, and they would do the same thing until the message got all the way around the campfire, and the last person whispered the message to you. Without exception, the message you would hear was something like “Mommy don’t want to sneeze!” Then everyone would laugh when you told them the original message, and everyone would remember hearing something slightly different.

Why is that?

Ever feel like a software or website project you’ve worked on is like that?

How about pulling your hair out after delivering a product just to hear your customer say “This is not what I asked for!” When you know you sat in that big conference room with 20 other witnesses that heard that client ask for the very thing you delivered! Outrageous. The nerve of some clients. How dare they describe what they want in a way that could possibly lead to you misinterpreting what they thought they said.

What is the deal?

Why have so many of us gone through the exact same experience?

Some popular answers:
“The requirements must have been terrible.”
“The developers didn’t read the documentation right”
“The client doesn’t know what they want.”

In truth, these all have some merit. However, no matter how much documentation, how good the developers and how articulate the client, we still go through it. I would like to propose that the real culprit is a concept that one of my favorite doctors told me about: the distortion of information. Sounds simple right? It is. This concept is defined by Wiio’s Laws of Communication, which you should check out, they are actually pretty funny. This concept is actually what makes the telephone game I described at the beginning so much fun.

The basic concept at play is that information is bound to get distorted when one person passes it to another person, and it gets exponentially worse the more people that message is passed between. If you want to experience this, play the telephone game, or get paid to experience it and get involved in software development.

What do you do to fix this problem?

There is no absolute fix. It’s a lot like LT on the football field: you can’t stop it, you can only hope to contain it, and if you don’t find a way to contain it, you will lose.