Category: I care about…

Someone roll me a MeTube

MeTubeSo apparently those crafty cats up at were chattin’ up an open source alternative to YouTube, smartly backed by Amazon’s S3 mass-storage service.

Serve the files with Drupal, passing the media files into the open source Flow Player or aptly-named Flash Video Player, and you’re nine-tenths to bein’ illegal (as they say).

Now, that’s pretty hawt, if I do say so myself.

But, here’s what I pitched to the Flock guys last night at their SF meetup: why isn’t there an extension for browsers that takes any media file (I’m primarily referring to video, but audio support tends to be flakey too), sends it off to some server-side transcoding service and re-embeds a Flash file in place of the original media — that’ll play no matter what system you’re on?

I mean, this would be better than just distributing a player with the browsers… it would actually solve the cross-platform issue entirely (okay, so the Linux folks still need an up-to-date Flash player).

I’ve never been a big fan of Flash (for a number of reasons) but as it’s clearly the most cross-platform compatible format for sending out video and it’s not always possible for producers to generate Flash video, this solution would reside on the client-side, perhaps as a subscription-based service (owing the costs of licensing the all the codecs and so on).

I mean, until we get wide-spread adoption of open source video codecs and formats that are as good as the proprietary ones, this seems like a good stop gap solution. Don’t it?

developerID to connect the folks who build stuff

Not sure what is gunna be, but the description sure is enticing: “a social identity network for programmers, designers, engineers, sys admins & others working in the professional developer community.” Nothing’s public yet, so I’m eager to see what it turns out to be… Oh, and a sweaty Ballmer is always sure to attract the right audience.

Ruminating on GPPLE

gppgleIt’s fun to speculate (i.e. Will gBrowser 2.0 be built on WebKit?) on what the cozying up between Apple and Google means. Is it really about search box revenue? Or is it a more insidious and calculated move, intended to push other folks to “show their cards” (so-to-speak) as to which major player(s) (or team) you want to side with?

Om’s media guess is as good as any, but I’m more interested in what this means for both search-as-platform and the future of browsers.

As we know, it’s long been speculated that Google is developing its own browser, yet the primary manifestations of this seem to be Mozilla Corp’s physical proximity to Google “All Your Base” HQ and the loving partnership on the Google Toolbar and the I’ll-pay-you-a-dollar-to-stop-searching-with-the-search-box campaign (because it’s costing us more than us giving every Firefox user a dollar!).

Could it be Mozilla’s resistance to pledge allegiance to Teh GOOG that’s causing them to look for another browser partner similarly predicated on open source roots (and thereby easily swayed with the right amount of “bought” — ahem! — I mean employed developers)?

Could it be that Apple’s iTunes Evil DRMpire is too attractive for Google to ignore and that, in wanting to gussy up before an all out Microsoft MediaCenter assault, is stacking its actors accordingly, aiming to not only deliver all the world’s information to you in a single click, but all its DRM’d content as well? Are ya feelin’ lucky?

Well do ya? Punk?

I do see some potentially significant ramifications for the browser space as more and more it’s become a search space, with very little to do with software whatsoever. While the relationship between Google and Mozilla is likely to remain strong, there may be chinks in the armor still, with Google and Apple being more 2.0 strict companies and Microsoft and Mozilla trending towards the heavier 1.5 transitional model.

Think of it this way: Mozilla and Microsoft do not have the same kind of content leverage that Google and Apple have. In fact, Mozilla has no content to sell and Microsoft, well, they’re situated squarely atop and albatross OS that promises to be a media panacea… that requires hardware most of the world doesn’t have. In the other court, Google content is already available cross platform and Apple music files have been downloaded a bazillion times into their proprietary iPod players. Would it not make sense for Google and Apple to control the entire distribution mechanism, soup-to-nuts, across all platforms? Isn’t that what Boot Camp is all about? Is that what open sourcing Darwin is all about?

Well, in all seriousness, I have no idea. But as I said, it sure is fun to conjecture! Y’know, this whole arrangement probably is just a good-natured relationship where two companies who value user experience and simplicity and are pioneers in their fields are getting together to form a union of trust and mutual support. It’s all about the users, y’know? — and doin’ what’s right for them. (If only I had a John Edwards drawl!)

Jobs, jobs and more jobs!

Fuck all y'all -- icons by laksmanDamn, there’s a lot of job boards out there. A new one every other day. It’s practically distributed already, except that they’re all speaking greek to one another, and engines like Edgeio, well, can’t make uniform sense of them because they all have their own way of marking things up. Like, it’s all the same kind of data, but if I were a computer, damned if I know that!

I mean, look at this… why haven’t they standardized on … or something?

Jason has a point as usual, but, man, to really go decentralized, you have to flip the whole model on its head. In which case he half misses the point too (sorry, even though I luv ya man).

is nice; a good step. In fact, everyone should be publishing their own hResume + hAtom, if anything, for shits and giggles (though we really need a tool for this).

Though, stepping back, what we really should be doing in this age of authentic empowerment is allowing people to write the job descriptions for themselves and declaring themselves competent for the purpose. I mean, if someone can accurately describe what they’re good at and what they’re not, that’s a person I want to hire!

Let me put it this way — which is the way that I want to see this balance shifting, since all the job aggregator and job listing sellers seem to have forgotten this part of the equation: we are living in a time of abundance, a time that will last a finite amount of time, to be sure. In this finite time period, I believe that it is possible more than ever for people to pursue work that they love to do, that really makes them happier than anything else, that really fills them up and doesn’t leave them somehow feeling diminished by the end of the day. A herd-mentality job board doesn’t help me feel like a unique snowflake; it doesn’t make me feel like I have something special to offer the world, nor does it make me feel like I’m in command of my destiny but rather waiting around for the hammer to drop and some business-two-point-oh-dude-you’re-so-not-even to anoint me their , picked from amongst a sea of similar generics.

What these boards ignore is the humiliation and please-pick-me! sameness that relegates my humanity to bumble alongside inside someone else’s aggregator. Ugh, think about that: to end up in someone else’s aggregator! What am, just a bunch of bits and data? Jason, I get the visual analogy, but to suggest that you’re choosing between a shotgun and a rifle when you go job “hunting” is a bit, um… Cheney-esque (Oops, did you really mean to shoot me… or not?)?

Your semantics betray your purpose (and everyone else’s) because I know you mean well and I’m really not trying to pick on anyone except those who think job boards are a good idea.

Here, okay, let’s redefine the problem before I get myself in serious shee-it: the goal of any job “service” should be to bring together people together who love to do certain things for a living with the folks who have a need (and capital) for those who happen to do that certain thing very well. To aim at less is to subjugate the potential of the new network (aka The Tubes) and to ignore the potential of this new medium to elevate the status and capability of the individual.

On the one hand, we are talking about work; exchange of value (usually represented in dollars and cents) for someone else’s time, attention and/or effort. On the other, we are talking about that which someone is devoting their waking life to — that is, the stuff that they share with their friends, their family, their relatives. Too often I’ve seen friends, family, my brother, settle… for less than what they’re capable of taking on. And it’s disheartening, it’s saddening, it’s less than what I would hope for anyone.

We’ve come so far — too far &mdash, for anyone with the volition to not be able to pursue a career doing that which they most want to do. These job boards are holding back the potential, reinforcing hierarchy and pushing people to be squeeze themselves into job descriptions that don’t really fit. It’s supply-side economics right? And we have the terms and vocabulary to describe work that needs to be done… but strangely, the reverse is also true, we just haven’t developed the nomenclature to express the demand side of the job performer market: I demand this kind of job with this kind of work, this size pay and these vacation dates.

Ironically I learned a lesson a long time ago from Jason, one that I think is didactic and worth repeating. As a company and small business, we hire our clients — that is, we pick folks to work with not based on pay but based on how well we think we can work with them. We hire them based on their openness, their desire to work collaboratively and whether they’re willing to look at the world with eyes wide open. It’s a challenge to maintain this standard, but it ultimately benefits both us and our clients. I would recommend this for anyone looking for work or thinking about what’s next — don’t just sell yourself to the most nichefied job board — hire your next boss. Make it your first priority to spell out clearly what you want to do and for whom you’re willing to do it. Job boards, sadly, will not reflect this preference, so it’s up to you to defend your right to pursue the work which will most satisfy you. In fact, you owe it to yourself.

The yin-yang of FOO and Bar

Tantek and Chris -- photo by Tara Hunt

Much has been made of the supposed sibling rivalry between FOO and Bar, owing to BarCamp’s origins last year as “an open alternative to FOO“.

What I think often goes missing from the story is that the original BarCamp was planned, organized and executed by a small scrappy group of upstarts, only one of whom had previously been to FOO Camp (and who ended up being invited back last year anyway). It wasn’t anti-FOO, it was just different — with different goals and a different raison d’etre.

In fact, I’ve personally reached out to the O’Reilly folks on a number of occasions to try to coordinate our events better and to even ask for favors. On the whole, they’ve been as gracious as anyone with as much going on as they’ve got and personally see no reason to chide them for focusing on their own business interests.

And I think Dave Weinberger‘s post is therefore useful in that he recognizes the value of socially engineered social networking while acknowledging the benefit of the “unbarred” model:

There’s value to an invitation-only party, but it’s not the only sort of party we need. That’s why I’m so happy that the original FOO Camp spurred the invention of unbarred BAR camps that are structured like FOO but are open to anyone. There’s a place for both.

Those who appreciate and have a sense for this duality — of there being both privilege in being invited to anything exclusive and those who, at the same time, can question what they have to offer and why they made the cut — get why both FOO and Bar can and in fact, should, co-exist. At FOO Camp, someone else invites you and you wonder why; at BarCamp, you invite yourself and over the course of a weekend prove why you did.

What I think Tim is still missing out on, however, is that the is very at odds with the competitive angst and jealousy that spurs events like (no offense Robot Robert, but why define your event by what it’s not? i.e. BarCamp isn’t an “unconference” — it’s an “ad hoc gathering” as it says on our homepage). And, Tim, I’d humbly suggest that you consider your own advice:

Stop worrying about what Winer thinks.

The way I see it, a year out, FOO and Bar represent the very yin and yang balance of openness and proprietariness that the open source community and its offshoot industries have struggled with since their inception (which has also been well documented in Markoff’s Doormouse). While one does not need the other to exist, that they both exist, espouse different organizing and ownership models and appeal to different people on different merits is what’s important. This is the reality and benefit of creating non-zero-sum economy where network effects and community rule the day. It’s not one other other, it’s both for one another.

BarCampEarth starts tomorrow!

BarCampEarth tshirt v2

So it is upon us… in a very short amount of time, BarCampEarth will commence, with simultaneous events happening around the world (with many more coming in September!). Taking part this weekend:

Whoa how far and wide our community has grown in a year. Believe it or not, I have a draft saved in my blog from August 24, 2005 titled “Bar Camp Worldwide”. I got as far as linking to an image and writing this line:

So it’s been suggested that Bar Camp spread outside of Palo Alto. In fact, it’s been suggested that it spread far and wide, from the West to the East to across the pond.

How prescient is that?

And now we even have a theme song (thanks Derek!).

Well there you have it. Forty some-odd camps later and it’s come full circle.

So if you happen to be in the Bay Area, you know where you’ll be this weekend:

BarCampStanford

Todd Davies has put together a tremendous time, starting off with a BBQ today at 6pm. I expect to see you there!

P.S. Shirts will be for sale soon soon! Thanks Miles!

Alex Bosworth’s API tips

has some great pointers on building web APIs. We’ve been advising many of our clients on building out or planning APIs for their products and this advice is very much in line with our advice (we’re also partial to OpenID and microformats).

Oh, and if you forget your API or microformats at the door, Sebastian has developed a way retrofit your site with microformats using Dapper. How cool!

Follow up on the mousetrap

Apparently I could have been more clear in my post on the Google Authentication mousetrap, so here’s some additional summary points:

  1. It’s not so much about lock-in as it is that Google can steamroll over independent competition because of their ability to integrate and cross-promote services. In the first bubble, they called this synergy and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s better for users, but worse for upstart competitors.
  2. As web apps become the norm, being able to move your data between them will become essential, and since almost all web apps require some form of authentication, you need to be able to share your credentials between these web apps to transfer the data.
  3. Microsoft Word already runs on OSX and so you already can copy and paste data between it and Appleworks. My point is that that’s not the case on the web today. Because commercial use of APIs are restricted, you have to wait for companies to forge business deals before you get the kind of interop that you already have between different company’s desktop-based applications.
  4. I feel that my view is squarely looking at reality — looking at what will happen if we don’t open up data formats and authentication protocols. I am placing my hope on microformats and OpenID — not because I care so much about the technology, but because until we have open standards for transferring data and open protocols for authenticating, it’s going to continue to be a disempowering situation for your typical end user. Like me.

The day Facebook stole the network

Marty Wells of Tangler (and a Citizen Agency client) has some great thoughts on Facebook’s usurping of MySpace’s opportunity to set the standard API of the social web. Basically, that Facebook came out with their API first means that they dictate the standard calls and features that everyone else will now have to offer parity with.

Joshua and the Delicious folks found themselves in a similar situation — delaying Flock’s rolling out of privacy in favorites even though Shadows had long since supported the feature in its API. And more recently, Ma.gnolia will be mirroring the Delicious API to speed up Flock integration. In the case of another incumbent, Photobucket mirrored Flickr’s API to push Flock integration.

In these and other cases, the sooner you go open, the sooner you reap the benefits. And, I have to admit, I’m happy that it was Facebook to make a move first.