Featured Tech.pinions – Page 56

Here’s to the NeXT 20 Years of the World Wide Web

250px-First_Web_Server — Tim Berners-Lee's NeXT Computer

Saturday August 6th marked the 20 year anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee publishing the first website. Whether he knew all that the web would become or not he still had the foresight to start the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) to ensure that standards drove compatability. If it wasn’t for the W3C I am not sure the web as we know it today would exist.

Internet standards have been one of the central forces that got us to where we are today and will be one of the central driving forces that will get us where will go tomorrow.

Interestingly enough Berners-Lee published the first website on the World Wide Web using a NeXT Computer. For those not familiar with history NeXT was the company Steve Jobs founded after his departure from Apple. That same NeXT computer that Berners-Lee used also became the worlds first web server.

I say I find that interesting because here we have yet again another Steve Jobs creation involved in a monumental moment in our industries history.

The World Wide Web has changed quite a bit in 20 years but I believe the web will change in the next five years more than it has in the last 20. Several things will drive this change and the first will be new advancements in semiconductors.

Silicon Advancements Will Lead the Way
We can track a great deal of technological progress to the microprocessor; it again will be at the heart of the next generation web.

At a fundamental level with each new process technology we are able to pack more transistors onto a single piece of silicon. This is key because the more transistors on a single chip the more that chip can do. The more that chip can do the more the hardware and software community can take advantage of its power and efficiency.

I’ve heard a great quote from time to time and it goes like this: “a software engineer will never tell you that we have enough microprocessing power.” Basically if we build it the software community will take advantage of it.

When I analyze the long term roadmaps from both X86 providers and the ARM community, I am convinced that not just local software like operating systems and applications but web software and web apps will all be transformed.

What we are seeing today from visual computing, speech and voice processing, graphics and media is still only scratching the surface. Next generation silicon is what will make next generation software possible.

Don’t Forget About Web Standards
Standards are the second thing that I believe will drive the future innovations of web software. The bottom line is HTML and JavaScript are some of the most, if not THE most, important programming languages for our future.

The comittee’s that drive these standards and the companies who help define them play a critical role in establishing the technical vision for the future of the web.

As I said near the beginning of this article that without the web standards we woudln’t have the web today. Had we not had standards the web, like many other technologies, would have fragmented and cross platform compatability may have never happened. Could you imagine if each company had their own version of the web and only their hardware could access their version of the Internet? That is why standards were key to the early web and will be key to the future web.

The Invisible Internet
Still today in the consciousness of many is the concept of getting ” on the Internet.” We are getting close to a world where the Internet is invisible but we are not quite there yet. Someday this consciousness about being “online” will dissappear and there will be no online or offline.

The Internet will be so deeply embedded into nearly everything that we will interact with it on any number of levels and we won’t even think about it. Crazy and somewhat scary to think about now but I believe it’s true.

We have a long way to go with a tremendous amount of innovation still ahead of us. I am also interested in which companies will be the leaders in bringing us the future web. To the point about NeXT being involved in the first web page, i’m willing to bet a Steve Jobs creation will be in the mix with the future web as well.

I for one am excited to see what the next 20 years has in store for the world. In closing I leave you with a great info graphic on the history of the World Wide Web.

Click here to see the full image.

Why Google Hates Patents

In a rather testy blog yesterday, Google’s Chief Legal Council David Drummond lamented the fact that Android is under attack from competitors who are using a patent war to thwart Androids growth.

Mr. Drummond calls these patents that attack Android “bogus” and suggests that Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and others are ganging up to keep Android from being competitive and impacting its growth.

He especially calls out Apple and Microsoft’s purchase of Nortel’s patents and suggests that while normally Apple and Microsoft are at “each others throats” he believes that something sinister is going on. But Mr. Drummond does not know Apple and Microsoft’s history. In 1997, Apple and Microsoft entered a major cross licensing deal that spans a great deal of technologies, especially user interface issues. And over the years, behind the scenes, they’ve expanded their cross licensing deals with an eye on making sure that they kept up with the changing technologies that were behind their original deal. Although the Nortel patents were a high profile case, many of these patents actually were very much in line with their quest to keep their original cross licensing deals up-to-date.

Ironically, Microsoft actually asked Google to bid with them and they refused.

I also found it interesting that Mr. Drummond was pleased that federal regulators are “ looking into” whether Microsoft and Apple acquired the Nortel patents for anti-competitive means.” Given what I stated above, Apple and Microsoft will just show them the history of their cross licensing deals and this point will be mute. By the way, if I were Google I would keep as far away from prodding federal regulators on any issue given the fact that they are also under major federal anti-trust scrutiny

Also if Google is so opposed to patents, then why did they shell out $100 million for patents from IBM? This seems contradictory to their view that patents are bogus. An interesting aside here is that none of these patents from IBM will help them ward off Apple. These IBM patents are mostly related to semiconductors and servers and Apple already has license to most of these from their original IBM/PPC partnership created during the mid 1990’s.

Now, I understand that Drummond’s is just doing his job. In fact, Google’s management has a fiduciary responsibility to defend Android just as Steve Jobs and team have a similar responsibility for defending their patents. However, I believe there is really more of an ideological issue in play and represents Google’s more Open Source approach to life that feels that all technology should be free for use by all. Versus Apple’s strong view that their IP is the result of serious investment and hard work and needs to be protected through the legal patent process to, as Steve Jobs has said, “keep people from stealing” their creative innovations.

I like what Daring Fireball’s John Gruber asks in his post on the subject:

“How is Google’s argument here different than simply demanding that Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, et al should simply sit back and let Google do whatever it wants with Android, regardless of the patents they hold?”

The other thing in play is that Google has always touted the fact that Android is free. But it is clear that if Oracle wins their suit against Google and Android’s use of Java , Oracle plans to charge each Android vendor $15.00 per license. And Microsoft has already gotten HTC to pony up at least $5.00 per HTC device that uses Android to cover Microsoft’s patents used in Android. In Apple’s case, if they win, they won’t even consider licensing that piece of the technology to anyone. So that part of Android that would be in violation of any of Apple’s patents would mean that Google and their licensee’s would have to find a work around and that could be costly to Google and every Android licensee.

And this takes a big bite out of Google’s argument that Android is free and would make any future licensee’s think hard about using Android if there are potentially sliding costs involved to cover any other patent claims that could pop up over time. No wonder they are bashing patents. They fear their impact on what has to be one of their big cash cows where Android is given out freely and they get the add revenues tied to it.

We have suggested to our clients that license Android from Google to begin factoring in at least $20.00 for a possible upcoming Android license fee in any future products. And we have warned them that if Oracle wins, they could try and collect that $15.00 for any Android device already shipped. This is obviously still a legal issue and we don’t know for sure how it will play out. But it would be foolish for any Android licensee not to be prepared for what they have to view as a worst case scenario if the legal battle goes in favor of Oracle and others challenging Androids use of their patents.

And don’t think that Apple, Oracle or Microsoft will back down on this issue. They know the stakes are high and will keep pressure on Google through the legal channels until it is resolved one way or another. It will be great theater watching these tech giants go after each other in the coming months.

The iPad Does What No Other Tablet Does

There actually may be a number of things that can be pointed out that truly differentiate the iPad. I however would like to focus on just one – battery life.

For the past week I have been camping in Lake Tahoe for vacation. All though i’m on vacation and not “working” I still like to check in from time to time as well as post new things on our site.

I brought a slew of electronics on this trip knowing that I would need multiple ways to get online and have very limited options and time to charge my gear.

So here it is Thursday and the only thing with juice left is my iPad. My Macbook Air, several other Android tablets, my iPhone, and several of the latest Android phones all dead. The only thing left standing is the iPad.

There are many reasons why this is the case but the biggest reason I believe this is possible is because Apple made the hardware (including designing the processor) and the software. When you can “tune” all the elements of your hardware and software together you can accomplish optimal efficiency in the areas you purpose to. One of the many areas Apple had accomplished and continues to strive for in all their products is battery life.

This is not always easy and some devices like phones simply can’t have as large of batteries as others like computers and tablets. But it is still a goal.

It is of course the goal of the industry as well. I don’t believe companies launch products with poor battery life as a goal. Only there are so many factors for other vendors who don’t control the critical parts of the supply chain like software and hardware, so it becomes a greater challenge.

Battery life is still perhaps in my mind one of the biggest things the industry still needs to progress with. Several years ago I would have never thought that I would have a device that I could use to do work and a slew of other tasks with that would last well over a week on single charge. I’m blown away the iPad is still going.

It is Thursday and i’ve been using the iPad normally since Saturday and it sill has 34% battery life left. In fact i’ve been using the iPad more than any other piece of electronics I brought since Saturday and they all still died.

Americans Elect’s Online Nomination Is a Recipe for Trouble

Americans Elect, a group that promises a new way of nominating a candidate for President in 2012, lept into prominence in recent days with a ringing endorsement from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. I don’t propose to debate the merits of the group’s ideas, but I want to take a look at the practicality of the proposed online nominating process. It’s not going to work.

The information Americans Elect gives on its web site is very sketchy, but the basic idea is that any registered voter can become a “delegate” simply by signing up. It’s not clear how, or if, voter registration is verified. All I had to do when I signed up was give an email address and create a four-digit PIN code. It appeared to me to be trivial to create multiple accounts using different email addresses; I asked Americans Elect about this but have not yet received a reply. [See update below]

There’s a good reason why we generally don’t see online voting for anything more serious than American Idol winners. Running a clean and secure online election is very, very difficult. Under the conditions we generally expect of formal elections, both security and anonymity as close to absolute as we can make them, it may be impossible. Last year, a modest experiment with online voting for U.S. military personnel abroad had to be suspended when it proved hopelessly insecure.

Systems that have been tried for serious online voting generally require the distribution of voting tokens–generally a one-time password of some sort–through a secure offline channel. Often this is done by sending the information via postal mail. Americans Elect doesn’t say whether it plans to use such a system, but it would be complicated and expensive for sort of multi-stage nominating process it plans to use.

There’s a big risk that the Americans Elect nominating process could be turned into a circus. Unless exacting measures are in place to protect the integrity of the voting, the system could very easily be gamed (as has happened with American Idol voting.) It will be interesting to see what state election officials have to say about this process, although, in general, parties are given great latitude in how they nominate candidates, and in the view of election boards, Americans Elect will be a party.

By the way, anyone thinking of clicking the Donate button on the American Elect web site should be careful to read the fine print. Contributions to the organization, like those to any party or candidate, are not tax deductible.

————-

UPDATE: I received the following unsigned reply to my question about measures to prevent multiple registrations:

Nothing, really. This is definitely at least something of a problem, but the way I see it, if we end up with with a meaningful number of delegates, the people with clone accounts will only be gaining minimal advantage to change things.

That said, if we can find a way to prevent this without causing significant usage/convenience problems, I’m all for it.

Sorry, but that drastically underestimates the web’s potential for mischief or malice. If Americans Elect want this process to be taken seriously, they’ll have to do a lot better.

My 5 Favorite New Features in OSX Lion

After spending some time working with Apple’s new operating system OSX Lion, I’ve landed on my top five favorite new features. Now granted, everyone uses computers differently. So for me and my computing habits these are the ones that lie at the heart of my upgraded experience.

Auto Correct

There are actually a number of very good new features for writing and typing. My personal favorite is a new and improved auto-correction feature that, like iOS, will fix a misspelled word or typo for you as you type.

Once a word is fixed a blue dotted line appears just under the corrected word to let you know it was fixed. This allows you to go back and edit the word if the in line edit was not what you wanted.

I type and write quite a bit and not having to backspace several times every sentence is extremely useful. Now that I have adjusted to the improved auto correction feature, I feel as though I can type more freely and clearly.

One other feature around text that I am coming to appreciate is the built in dictionary and contextual word search. You can highlight any word you see and right click with a mouse or triple tap on the trackpad to bring up a dictionary as well as contextual word search and wikipedia of the word.

Spotlight

I use spotlight for nearly everything. I do not have a very organized desktop nor do I organize my files very well so Spotlight saves me a huge amount of time. Primarily because although I don’t know where my files are most of the time I do remember the files name. I use Spotlight for more than just files but for programs as well.

The biggest edition to Spotlight that I absolutely love is called Quick Look Results. What this does is allow you to mouse over any of the Spotlight results and to the left of the Spotlight results drop down appears a quick view preview of the actual file. This way if you have multiple files similarly named or just want to make sure the result is the exact file you were looking for you can now see a quick preview before opening.

Another edition to Spotlight that i’m finding quite useful is the ability to drag and drop the file anywhere on your computer right from the Finder results.

Mail

I am a big Mail user and I have been for quite some time. I never could get used to Microsoft Entourage and even when they launched Outlook for Mac I still preferred Mail. Threaded messages, smart folders, integration with iCal and more were what had me hooked. So naturally I was quite pleased with many of the upgrades to Mail.

The upgrades to Mail’s search capabilities have to be my favorite new feature. Like my needs to search for files often with Spotlight, I also need to search for emails frequently. I don’t always remember the details of who a specific message is from, I only vaguely remember important things. The last upgrade Apple made to Mail helped be a good bit in this department but the latest upgrade to search has made it even faster and less work to find the email desired.

This is because of an advanced filtering process called search tokens. Search tokens let you filter your search down each step of the way and quickly narrows any and all search results until voila, you find exactly what you are looking for.

I’ve used the threaded messages options in Mail but the newest feature Conversations takes it to a whole new level. This has been fantastic because I tend to have very long conversations through email. By being able to see all the conversations organized and threaded in the same window pane has been a joy to use.

Mission Control

When Apple added Expose to OSX I became an Expose junkie. I keep many applications open frequently and I multi-task jumping between them all just as frequently. Expose drastically improved my work flow efficiency. Mission Control is the next step is multi-tasking efficiency and it certainly lives up to its name. I particularly like how Mission Control organizes all your applications and keep your desktop, dashboard and other workspaces at the top of the screen always accessible.

One of the more enhanced elements of Mission Control that is not possible with Expose is the laying of windows on top of applications. If you have multiple windows open from the same application, Mission Control layers the images on top of each other and allows you to select which you are trying to get to.

Auto Save and Application Resume

Most modern applications have some level of document recovery but Auto Save in OSX Lion makes the process standard. Not having to worry about whether or not a document is saved or work is going to get lost certainly eliminates some of the distraction to work efficiently.

Application resume is another great feature that is built into OSX Lion. This features lets you close an application and upon re-opening you are right where you left off. One of the areas where this is particularly useful is with Safari. I like to leave tabs open with some of my most frequented websites and being able to open Safari and have all my tabs re-open with my favorite websites or the last ones open has been extremely useful.

I’m sure as I use Lion more I will find more features that I love but for now those are my top 5. I’d be curious what those who have Lion think and what your top 5 new features are?

What is the future of the PC Industry?

As I perused the recent PC shipment numbers from last quarter and saw that they were rather anemic and with relatively slow growth forecast in the future, it became even more evident to me that we are at a major inflection point in our journey with personal computers. We started this journey in the 1950’s with mainframes and then went on to minicomputers. But with both of these technologies, only a limited amount of people had access to them.

But when the PC came on the scene, it democratized the computing experience and made it possible for millions of users to experience the virtues of a computer. At each point in history, as we moved from mainframes-to-mini’s-to PC’s, we have had a major inflection point in which one technology faded from the forefront and the one’s following it took center stage. But even as we moved from one computing design to another, the older technology matured and took a different place in our digital world. Mainframes are now the super computers and backbones of huge enterprises. Minis have transitioned to powerful workstations and clustered servers in a sense. And the PC’s, which cut the cords to mainframes and mini’s to define their existence have become the workhorses within a family’s home, managing their digital movies, photos, finances, etc. At this stage PC’s have matured and settled into a comfortable place where its reason for existence is more and more focused on handling the heavy digital lifting we need from time to time.

Now, even if the PC market is slowing down and is not as robust as in the past, we are still going to sell 350-400 million PC’s every year for some time. They have a place and will continue to be important digital tools in business and the home. However, we are at the next major inflection point and PC’s are about to take a back seat to the newcomers that will define the next major growth phase of computing.

I believe that this inflection point can be described as going from personal computing to personalized computing and will be defined by tablets and smartphones that take all types of shapes, form factors and designs that make the computing experience more personalized and customizable. This inflection point is just as dramatic as when the PC came on the scene and cut the chord between the mainframes and mini’s and brought personal computing local. Another way to think of this is that we are moving into a phase in which people want a PC on their desktop and in their pocket.

But, it goes even deeper if you look at the PC, tablets and smartphones as just another screen in our digital lives. In the future we will have a lot of screens in our lives as well. A screen in our cars with a 3G chip in it so that our cars can be connected to the cloud at all times. Or screens in our refrigerator that is tied to application specific functions related to the kitchen and food. Or a screen built into the mirrors in our bathroom that is tied to the Internet and can deliver custom information on demand as we get ready to head out for the day.

Here is a chart from one of our presentation decks that shows what this might look like. Out in the periphery are a whole host of screens. Next is a layer of services that serve as gateways to things like apps and various services that are then tied to the cloud.

This new inflection point is being led by tablets and smartphones but is bound to carry over to a whole host of others screens people might choose to meet more personalized needs over time.

On the surface, the PC industry and PC companies who have a history as hardware vendors should see this as a new opportunity to extend their PC design and manufacturing prowess to this new extended personalized computing opportunity. But that is not the case. Except for Apple who has made this transition quite smoothly, the rest of the PC vendors are quite challenged when it comes to designing products outside their normal PC expertise. And it is really unclear to me if they ever will be able to extend their experience in PC and laptop expertise to personalized computing.

It gets even more interesting when you realize that hardware is actually only 1/3rd of the equation. In the future of “personalized computing” there is also the apps and services layer and then how all of these work with and react to a cloud based back end. These screens may be smart but they get much smarter when they have apps and are connected to the Internet.

At the moment, most of the Windows PC vendors realize that moving to a tablet/smart phone extension of their business is pretty tough. Indeed, the big guys seem to be putting more energy in the core strength’s, which are enterprise computing and SMB. I don’t think they will give up but I suspect this will be a big struggle for them to create “personalized” computing devices that really add to their bottom line.

This leaves room for potential outsiders to swoop in and become major players if they have the ability to create new “screens” of their own that can be tied to a rich eco system of apps and cloud services. The one that I see on the horizon that fits this description is Amazon. It is widely rumored that they will do a tablet this fall. But it is their back end and services that could make them a major player over night. They have a music store, a video store, an Android apps store and the big kicker-credit cards of over 200 million users. Like Apple, they have spent over a decade building this back end and customer loyalty/commerce engine and would be well positioned to end up being the #2 consumer tablet player almost overnight.

Further Reading: The Amazon Tablet Opportunity Could be Huge

So how will this ultimately impact the traditional PC vendors? My best guess is that they will not be able to compete in the consumer tablet and smartphone market unless they pour billions of dollars into building similar cloud based back ends and services that make their digital screens sing. The only traditional PC vendor who could have a chance at playing in this new personalized computing consumer space is HP if they are willing to make the billions of dollars in investments to build out their own eco system of apps, services and a rich cloud back end that equals Apple and Amazon.

Further Reading:
HP TouchPad Review – 3 Things that Set it Apart
10 Days with the HP Touchpad

Instead, what I believe will happen is that the traditional PC makers could and should make a major push into corporate with tablets and own that space. Yes, Apple is gaining serious ground here, but they don’t have an enterprise sales and service organization that is really needed to support and integrate tablets into an IT department. In the end, I believe they will realize that it will be almost impossible to compete at the consumer level with Apple and Amazon and put more of their energy into enterprise and SMB focused tablets.

The PC market is maturing and mainstream PC vendors are still well positioned to create new and innovative products around PC ‘s and laptops that could still see yearly growth as much as 10% over the next few years. But I am not optimistic about their chances of extending their computing expertise beyond the more traditional PC and laptop form factors and take serious ownership of the digital consumer. That will come from Apple and Amazon and anyone who can build out a complete eco system of hardware, software and services that really meet the needs of the consumers of the future.

Three Numbers from Apple’s Earnings That Should Scare Competitors

By now you have probably heard that Apple had the best quarter of their existence in the previous earnings period. Ben has given the basic details in his post but I wanted to share with you three other numbers that came from the call with their COO, Tim Cook, after the earnings were released-numbers that should keep Apple’s competitors up at night.

The first is their cash horde. It now sits as $76.2 billion. In my PC Mag column this week I wrote in detail how Apple uses this cash to its advantage and I suggest you read it and see how Apple “invents” products of the future with this cash reserve, making it very hard for competitors to keep up with them. A reader pointed out that if you subtract current liabilities from this cash position, they actually have about $60 billion in free cash to work with. This is still a pretty big reserve to work with.

See: How Apple Uses its Cash Hoard to its Advantage

The second scary number is that Cook said that 86% of the Fortune 500 in the US are testing iPads and looking at deploying them within their enterprise solutions. We already know that SalesForce.com has bought iPads for their entire work force and are seeing major benefits from its use. And Cook also said that it is being tested in many US government organizations as well. If Apple gains a lot of traction with major US enterprises it could make it hard for any other tablet makers to make any serious inroads given Apple’s huge head start with the iPad.

But the third number should really cause the major PC companies with WW reach to be concerned. Tim Cook said that 49% of the Global 500 are testing iPads for use in global enterprise solutions. I am aware of at least two Global 500 companies that are in the final stages of their tests and could buy thousands of iPads for WW deployment by early next year. This kind of interest from Global IT bodes well for Apple and means that their large head start over competitors could serve the very well in this WW market for enterprise-based tablets.

Although the main audience that is driving iPad sales is clearly coming from consumer’s, this interest in iPads within corporate America and WW IT could possibly increase demand more for iPads by a third of what it already is today from consumers. While the big tablet vendors are also eyeing IT markets for their tablets, they better get a serious offering into their IT customers hands soon or they risk the possibility that Apple could “iPod” them in this market the same way Apple innovated around the iPod and pretty much wiped out any competitive threats along the way.

If I was an Apple competitor, I would be amazed at the monster earning numbers. But the three numbers I listed above should have me shaking in my boots.

The Need for Smarter Mobile Notifications

Push notifications on our smart phones and tablets are shaping up to be a central part of our experiences with those devices. The concept itself has many benefits, particularly where it lets us get information quickly and choose how to respond to that information. I have however recently had an experience with a notification that not only frustrated me but in turn forced me to conclude that we need smarter notifications.

The experience was several weeks back and it was with the CNN app. Tennis is among many of the sports I enjoy watching on TV. I especially like the major tournaments where 3 out of 4 are held in other parts of the world. The most recent major tournament was Wimbledon held in England. I watched many of the big match’s leading up to the championship between Rafael Nadal and Novak Jokovic.

Because of the time zone difference between the US and England the time for the championship match was on a Sunday morning. We had family things to do that morning so I set my DVR to record the finale. Perhaps you know where this story is going. Later that morning as we are driving around and I heard my phone alert me of a notification. Responding quickly to nearly every sound my phone makes, I quickly pulled it out to see a message from CNN saying Novak Jokovic had defeated Nadal and won Wimbledon.

Given that I was recording this match I would have loved to watch it without knowing the outcome. However the CNN app gives me no options to tell it not to send me any alerts related to sports or in even more detail which sports. Therefore the outcome was spoiled for me entirely and thus frustrating.

Perhaps deeper personalization of our phones would give apps the information necessary to know more about us and craft notifications that way. Or perhaps some level of context awareness could be used to dictate which notifications I receive and when.

Notifications are needed but they should also be smarter. However we solve this problem there needs to be a way for us to tell our smart devices which bits information we would like to be notified of and which ones we don’t need to be bothered with. This level of app personalization needs to be a key part of how we think about software in the future.

Netflix as a Streaming Service is the Bandwidth King

News broke yesterday that Netflix was raising the price of its streaming plus DVD-in-the-mail plans. It was interesting to see all the backlash from some media and from consumers on Twitter. As much as this may be shocking in the short term what it really signals is the bigger picture story that Netflix is really a streaming video service not a DVD-by-mail service.

In fact I think this piece in the Wall St Journal got it right: Reed Hastings Doesn’t Want You To Pay More For Netflix. He Wants You To Stop Using DVDs.

If you noticed, the cost of their streaming only service did not go up at all. Only the packages that included an option for DVD-by-mail went up in cost. The age of Internet video is undoubtedly upon us. This reality is cemented in stone if we do a quick case study of Netflix.

I’ve recently analyzed a Q2 2011 report on Netflix from Sandvine Networks. Here are the key points from that report as I see it.

Netflix now accounts for 29.70% of all downstream traffic during peak period (evening traffic)
Netflix has 23.6 Million Total Subscibers
The average Netflix consumer consumes more than 40gb of data per billing period
Playstation 3, XBOX 360, PC, and Wii (in that order) account for 85% of Netflix traffic
Average consumer using Netflix on an XBOX 360 consumes over 80gb of data per billing period

To quote a statement from their report:

“It is difficult to understate how truly staggering the growth has been. Lest the reader think that this phenomenon
is limited to peak period, even when measured over 24 hours, and when measuring all traffic (upstream and
downstream), Netflix is #1.”

Netflix is now the undisputed bandwidth king of the Internet in North America. What’s more is that they have caught Comcast in total US subscribers both with just over 22 million.

What I find most interesting about the Netflix streaming service is how the non-techie community has embraced it. We are hearing more and more frequently in our interviews with mainstream consumers (non-early adopters) how they are turning to Netflix as a part of their prime time evening experience. The reality is for this to happen Netflix time is taking away from their service providers time. In fact we are beginning to hear frequently in these interviews how many are cutting the chord to cable and using Netflix streaming only.

These are telling signs about the value these types of services offer into the main part of the market. As more online streaming services from companies like Apple, Amazon and perhaps even Google continue to grow and become attractive, traditional MSO’s will have no choice but to adapt and adapt fast.

The Bandwidth Story
The real point I want to make is around bandwidth demand. The bandwidth Netflix is demanding from North American service providers is simply stunning. Keep in mind this is just one service. I expect many entrants into the streaming media sector from major players over the next 5 years. The impact on broadband will be overwhelmingly significant.

Not only are the bandwidth demand numbers I pointed out above only from one service; they are also only from one device and one concurrent stream. What happens when you have multiple people in homes consuming Netflix on a tablet, PC and TV all at the same time? The answer is the 29% of downstream traffic could double or triple.

The multi-connected-device reality that is coming is one i’m not sure the network and broadband providers are ready for.

Are Service Providers Prepared?
The Wall St Journal Heard on The Street section published a commentary on this subject titled: “The Time Bomb in Netflix’s Streaming Strategy.”

If we do see a continued explosion in streaming services how will the broadband service providers meet the demands of their consumers? Are the networks themselves capable and ready to handle this explosion of streaming media?

These are all questions we will have to wait to see how they are solved. I do however hope that whatever costs that get passed to consumers do not hinder the success of these services as the WSJ article suggests. What could very well happen is that the costs of traditional TV packages go down and data packages go up – just a thought.

It is in the best interest of the network and service providers to add more value to their broadband networks. Right now they believe their broadcast services are the most valuable but very shortly that value will transition into their broadband services. And that transition will happen on the back of services like Netflix.

China’s Real Role in Tech   

I have had the privilege of traveling to about 55 countries as part of my job over the last 30 years. And while I really enjoy Italy, France, Hong Kong, and Singapore, the one country that fascinates me the most is China. I first went to China in the early 1990’s, just when they were starting to establish their special trade zones. At that time the government was still leery of outsiders and we could not travel anywhere without a personal guide of some sort.   

Fast forward 20 years and the China I visited in 1990 is not the same place it is today. China has emerged as an industrial powerhouse and a major manufacturer of all types of goods, especially electronics and computers. I became aware of China’s real interest in computer manufacturing during a dinner I had in Taipei with ACER founder, Stan Shih in 1991. At the time, it was illegal for any Taiwanese company to do business with mainland China. But Mr Shih told me that he was working through private channels and was planning to put one of his computer manufacturing facilities in China shortly.

Indeed, within a few years, China had opened its doors to various partners throughout the world and started down a path to become one of the major manufacturers of personal computers and tech related products.  But China has gone down another path that has enhanced its role in the world of technology. They have made hardware, semiconductor and software engineering a keystone of their educational system and in fact, they produce the most doctorates in these fields then any other country in the world. And all of their engineers and most of their college educated youth take English as a second major, thus making it possible for them to communicate well within the international business community.

Software Expertise
Last fall I want to China to speak to a couple of thousand software developers who had gathered to learn more about developing specifically for smart phones. They came from all over China and represented top students from the universities as well as individual developers who were specifically interested in developing for the Android platform. Although the iPhone is a hot item in China and there are a lot of people developing for the iPhone, most of the major Chinese handset makers are backing Android (a completely customized version) and this will clearly be the OS of choice for smart phones in this country.

To put this into perspective, China will sell about 500 million cell phones in 2011 and at least half of them will be smart phones, with Android phones taking the lion’s share of this market. I spoke to a professor at one of the universities after my speech and he told me that two years ago he had about 30 students signed up for his smart phone developer class. This year he had over 3000 sign up for it.

What is perhaps most striking about modern day China is that a middle class is developing and even in the outer provinces, people have cell phones and TV’s. And the traffic jams in Beijing are amazing. One of my hosts told me that there are at least 100 million cars in and around Beijing now, which unfortunately makes it the most polluted place I have been to in years, next to Mexico City.

Thirst For Education
But the thing that both impresses me and concerns me the most about China is the incredible drive and interest in education that makes these students tick. After years of incredible oppression, the ability to learn more freely and to think for themselves is surely a welcome change from the past. Their emphasis on math and sciences at all levels of education puts them so ahead of the US that it is frightening. I don’t want to get on a high horse here but to not emphasize math and science in the US educational system will only put the US at a disadvantage for future competition, especially in the world of technology.

While China clearly has made major strides in education and commerce and has become a powerhouse in manufacturing, banking and world trade, I was reminded that it still is a society that has a lot of controls over its information and people. During my visit I could not get access to Facebook or Twitter at all. It was blocked, at least through the server of my Hilton Hotel Internet connection. And various types of searches through Google were also blocked, although on this trip I had less trouble using Google then in the past.

And it is still clear that China favors home grown properties over outside sites like Google, Yahoo, etc. Baidu is their top search engine and China created apps drive most of the smart phone market. But what a lot of people don’t know is that a great deal of the apps created for the rest of the world is actually coded in China. I deal with many US based software firms who use Chinese software shops to help create, fine tune and support their overall software development projects. China’s influence on hardware and software is much more far reaching then people understand.

But it is the drive of the young people I met on this last trip that really struck a chord with me. I spoke to dozens of kids who just want to be normal, hard working folks who can contribute to the world of technology development. Some were true entrepreneurs and dreamed of having their own companies and in some way making it big. They know of the many tech millionaires and billionaires that have risen within the Chinese tech community and some aspire to that type of fortune.

But for most, they just want to have a better life for themselves and their families. They want a simple apartment and the big prize for them is to own their very own car. To them that is the symbol of success. More importantly, they are serious students of technology. The kids I met are not techies in the sense that they just love technology. Instead they represent millions of engineering students who want to invent new technology products, not just play with them.

Although I still have great faith in Silicon Valley and its role in the world of technology development and the other key tech centers around the US dedicated to technological inventions, China’s emphasis on math and science and its focus on technology innovation cannot be ignored. This is the real role they are playing in advancing the world of technology. In financial circles, we clearly know that China is a country to be reckoned with, especially since they hold most of our debt. But its rise as a tech powerhouse and one that has millions of engineers dedicated to finding new tech solutions and products means that its competitive position in tech will only rise. It should be admired and feared at the same time. The US really is in danger of losing its edge in tech if it does not reverse its course and make math and science more important to our educational system.

How The Internet Saved My Keg

If you are like me you have dozen’s of stories of how content from the Internet has helped you in some way. I often take the Internet for granted. Sometimes it takes a crisis where I use the web to gain obscure yet valuable knowledge to remind me of the power of the World Wide Web. I shared a story earlier in the year in my SlashGear column about how I got information, in real time from the web, to help me deliver babies from my pregnant goat. The crisis that time was due to a complication with the labor of one of our prized goats. This time however the crisis was with my keg.

I own a Kegerator, which is a small refrigerator specially built to house a keg and dispense cold draft beer. I emptied my current keg a few weeks ago and unplugged then cleaned my Kegerator. Over the weekend I decided it was time to get my next great summer brew. I plugged the Kegerator in and left to go purchase my next keg. When I got home my Kegerator was not cooling and I began to panic.

So as I always do when I am in search of information, I pulled out my phone and searched for reasons a refrigerator would not cool.

I quickly ran through the symptoms I found online until I identified the problem (the site I used was written by a fridge repair man who listed all the steps he would take to diagnose the problem). It appeared the coils were dirty and needed to be vaccumed and scrubbed. I quickly found a how-to-video on YouTube on how to properly clean and scrub refridgerator coils then followed the steps. I then plugged my Kegerator back in and sure enough it started cooling instantly.

Prior to the Internet how would I have solved this problem? Most likely I would have had to call an appliance repair service. Even in this scenario there would have been no guarentee that the refigerator repair person could have come out immeditely or even on the same day, assuming they were open on the weekend in the first place. It would have also cost a bundle to have emergency service done.

The bottom line is prior to the Internet I would have likely been sunk and run the risk of losing my entire keg. Every time I have one of these experiences where the Internet provides me with obscure yet timely and valuable knowledge I am amazed. We have a friend who actually used YouTube to learn how to replace her roof and did the entire job herself just using how-to’s from YouTube.

I ask myself is there any bit of knowledge that is not on the Internet?

HP’s TouchPad-Can it compete with Apple’s iPad and Android Tablets?

Over the last few weeks I have spent a lot of time testing out two new tablets that are now on the market. The first is the Samsung 10.1” Galaxy Tab and the second is the new Palm TouchPad. Up until these two tablets came out it was clear to me that Apple pretty much had the tablet market to themselves. And while I had also tested the 7 inch Galaxy Tab, the 7 inch Zoom and the 7 inch RIM PlayBook, I felt that the real competition for the iPad would only come when we had tablets with 9- 10 inch screens that rivaled the iPad’s design.

For a full week I carried all three of these tablets with me everywhere I went and used them each for all of the basic tasks I do daily on a tablet. All three have very good Web browsers although Flash works just like it does on a PC on the TouchPad. All three have good touch based user interfaces. And to some degree, they actually all looked the same when I laid them down on a table and the screen was turned off. As I have stated in previous articles, one major attraction of a tablet to me is that it is a highly portable screen that serves as a window to the Internet, applications and ultimately the cloud. Of course, once you pick them up you notice immediately that the iPad is the sleekest of the bunch and the new Palm Touchpad is the thickest of the three.

Much has been written about the iPad so I won’t spend any time on this elegant product that, at the moment, dominates the tablet market. And there are dozens of reviews out on the Galaxy Tab as well. And reviews for RIM’s Playbook are also plentiful. So for this article I would like to share some thoughts on HP’s Touchpad, the newest tablet on the market and I will focus on two pressing questions.

The first question I get asked often is whether the Palm Touchpad is competitive?
The simple answer is yes it is. We have worked with Web OS for many years and consider this the most stable mobile OS on the market next to Apple’s IOS. And although our familiarity with Web OS has mainly come through the Pre, using it on the tablet now was as easy as it was when I first got the iPad and used IOS on it the same way I had used it on the iPhone. In that sense, Palm Pre users will feel right at home with this tablet.

With that in mind, it is clear to me from a hardware and software OS standpoint, that this is a solid product and one that is more then competitive at these levels. However, this leads me to the second major question I get often.
Can HP/Palm be successful with the TouchPad coming to market this late and with very little software support from the 3rd party developers?

This is a harder question to answer and one that needs to focus on three key things that HP/Palm need to do to make it a market winner.

First, they have to step up their efforts with the third party community and drive them to create thousands of native apps for the TouchPad. When I used native Web OS apps on the TouchPad that are identical to ones that are on the iPad or Android platforms, they looked just as good and worked the same as the do on these other operating systems. And in some cases, thanks to the Touchpad’s UI and multitasking, some worked even better.

On the test unit I had, many of the 6500 Web OS apps available at launch were apps written for the 3.5 inch Pre screens and do not scale to the 9.7 inch screen on the Touchpad. And unlike Apple’s iPhone apps on the iPad, they don’t even have a 2X button to artificially make them scale to a full screen and just sit in a 3.5 inch window in the center of the TouchPad. Although these apps work, they clearly do not take advantage of this new screen real estate. However, there are 300 apps written for the Touchpad that do work in full screen mode. This to me is perhaps their greatest challenge given the fact that Apple has over 60,000 native apps for the iPad and counting and Android has bout 10,000 tablet apps and strong developers support for this platform.

Second, they are going to need to make sure their channel partners really know how to sell the Touchpad and can demonstrate the areas where it differentiates from the iPad and Android tablets. Unlike Apple, who has their stores to enhance the selling process of the iPad, HP has to lean on its hundreds of thousands retailers of all sizes to sell this new product for them. And I believe they will need to spend serious ad dollars over the next 18 months around the world if they want to make any dent in the iPad and Android Tablet market share that is growing by leaps and bounds.

But the third thing that they need to do is put a tight focus on tablet solutions for the enterprise. They need to deliver a seamless integration of the TouchPad with their current IT services and solutions programs. The market for tablets is very crowded in the consumer space and even if they get more apps and spend more ad dollars pushing people to the channel to buy the Touchpad, they have a lot of competition from Apple and Google there. On the other hand the enterprise market for tablets is in its infancy. Yes, Apple has made some impressive headway in enterprise but this is not their primary focus for the iPad. And Windows 8 for Tablets is still a year away and Android’s lack of major security software and enterprise apps has slowed down its adoption in the enterprise.

But HP pretty much owns the enterprise for PC’s, laptops and servers and with a major focus on integrating the Touchpad into their overall IT solutions program, HP could deliver a powerful tablet that enterprises could adopt in large numbers. I consider this a critical factor for the TouchPad’s ultimate success and all indications are that HP is going to key in on the enterprise with this new tablet of theirs as well as extend Web OS to PC platforms to give developers even more incentive to create apps for Web OS. HP has hinted that they will ship as many as 100 million Web OS devices yearly, of which 70-75 million will be integrated into their PC’s and tablets.

Given the strong lead Apple has in the tablet market and the inroads Android is making via its various licensees, HP will clearly have an uphill battle coming to the market this late with their new TouchPad. But I am very bullish on it’s the quality of its OS and even the Touchpad’s solid design. If they can get strong software support as well as make enterprise a key target for this tablet, then the TouchPad can clearly be competitive and could become a third solid tablet device that consumers and business users can choose from in the years ahead.

Final Cut Pro X, Apple, and the Enterprise

A couple of days ago, I wrote about how Macs has become the overwhelming computer of choice for tech elites. No sooner had I done this than Apple offered glaring proof of its limitations as a provider of technology for professionals–or as a vendor to the enterprise.

Final Cut Pro X is the successor to Final Cut Pro, which has become the non-linear editing software of choice for professional videographers and filmmakers. (It also replaces Final Cut Express, a prosumer version.) The problem is that X is a completely new program, with new ways of doing things. It is incompatible with project files for older versions and lacks many features that pros have come to rely on.
Continue reading Final Cut Pro X, Apple, and the Enterprise

The iPhone 4 Dominates Flickr – What This Says About The Future

News broke yesterday highlighting the fact that the iPhone 4 has become the most popular camera in the Flickr community. There are many ways to look at this information. We could point out that in April the iPhone 4 was slightly below the champ at the time in the Nikon D90 and simply two month’s later it is the current king. We could also look at how in another two month’s the iPhone 4 will have a commanding lead in terms of Flickr camera popularity.

I however am more interested about what this information tells us about the future. Continue reading The iPhone 4 Dominates Flickr – What This Says About The Future

Do Consumers Want Tablets or iPads?

John Paczkowski, over at the All Things D blog, wrote an interesting article titled “Consumers Don’t Want Tablets, They Want iPads.” I encourage you to read it, it was a good read with some good statistics from Bernstein Research on tablet brand awareness and form factor preference. In terms of where the market is today i’d have to agree that mainstream consumers are highly in favor of the iPad over other tablets. The question is will this always be the case or will the market even out, and if so when?

Paczkowski’s theory, as stated in the opening, is that the tablet market is currently similar to the original MP3 market. All though Apple didn’t invent the MP3 market they re-invented it and controlled much of its growth. Consumers preferred the iPod to all other MP3 players, mainly due to Apple’s ecosystem. Apple is in the driver’s seat with tablets currently because again, all though they didn’t invent it, they re-invented it. The Apple ecosystem is uniquely positioned to continue to keep them dominant in the tablet category.

There is however a fundamental difference between the iPad and the MP3 player. The MP3 player was for the most part of its maturity cycle a feature centric device. Meaning it generally did only one thing well, play music. The iPad and tablets at large are computers, which are general purpose not specific function devices, meaning they do many things well.

This difference creates the market opportunity for fragmentation once it matures. I liken what will happen in this market to the current automobile market. There are many choices that cater to a wide variety of consumer choices. This is what happens when a market reaches maturity.

The tablet market is a maturing market, not a mature one. Therefore in the beginning there will be fewer market leaders and less choices until the market matures. Consumers will choose the market leader to get their feet wet with the new product and use it to help them decide their own preferences and desires.

The real trick will be for Apple and others to create “sticky” experiences with their ecosystem. This will keep consumers vested and committed to a specific hardware, software and services solution. Vendors who don’t do this well will likely face the chance of consumers switching or at least considering to switch with each buying cycle. If a vendor creates enough depth with their offering, getting consumers committed to their ecosystem, then there will be less of a chance they will switch with each buying cycle.

To say that people (mainstream consumers, not early adopters as there is a difference) want iPads not tablets is correct for the time being. We could have easily said the same thing 3 or 4 years ago that consumers want an iPhone not a smart phone. However the market has developed and is quickly maturing making fragmentation a given.

I’ll bet 3 years from now the tablet market will look different, with more choices and more mature products from iPad competitors. The question will remain whether consumers will buy.

Tech Patent Fights: What’s at Stake

Recent days have been filled with news about patent disputes. Lodsys, a company that claims fundamental patents on in-application purchases, fired off another batch of suits against alleged infringers. Apple and Nokia resolved a complex legal fight over smartphone patents. Dolby Labs sued Research In Motion. And the U.S. Supreme Court told Microsoft to pay up on a judgment that technology in Office infringed on a patent held by tiny i4i LP. Continue reading Tech Patent Fights: What’s at Stake