::.. Timing ..::

:: 2003/04/25 ::

My take on Internet dropouts published at WSJ Online

The Real Time column folks at WSJ published my comments -- along with ten or so others -- on the 24th. I riffed on the column earlier this week at Timing.

:: Stowe Boyd 4/25/2003 06:11:50 PM [link] ::
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Dialogue with Konstantin Rybalkin of Leadmind

I recently learned of the release of 1.5 of PopMessenger from Leadmind. Having never encountered the product, I contacted the company,and 'spoke' with the CEO, Konstantim Rybalkin.

SB: Where are you located? Somewhere in Eastern Europe? What's your background?

KR: We are located in Central Asia, Kazakhstan. We were founded in 2000, and last year we decided to reach out to a global market with one of our products: PopMessenger. Previously, we had only worked in the region.

SB: Tell me a little about the features and architecture of PopMessenger. Your literature describes it as a peer-to-peer approach. Is there no server side component?

KR: PopMessenger is an easy-to-use IM for SO/HO or enterprise users. It runs in the LAN, and is capable of sending both private and public messages and files to online and offline users. PopMessenger uses peer-to-peer technology, so no server-side software is needed. At startup, PopMessenger sends a broadcast packet to find out what other computers on the LAN are running PopMessenger at the moment. Then it creates a users list. When a user sends a message, it sends to certain recipient using IP.

SB: Do you support interoperability with the public networks?

KR: No, PopMessenger is intended for local area networks only.

SB: Do you support archiving of IM content?

KR: Yes, PopMessenger logs all messages in an archive. You can also view, delete or print messages stored in the archive.

SB: File sharing?

KR: The application does not support file sharing. But you can send files to certain user on your network. [SB: Turns out that was what I was looking for, but Konstantin was right to interpret "file sharing" in the obvious way, not as it is used in the IM world.]

SB: What differentiates your solution from others in the market? Are you competing on price?

KR: PopMessenger is extremely intuititve, and easy to use. It is highly configurable and supports a wide variety of languages. Along with our flexible pricing options, there is no need for product training.

SB: Who are your most direct competitors?

KR: Vypress Messenger, Trusted Messenger, Lan Talk XP, Natural Born Chatter, etc. [Good lord, a long list of products I haven't looked at.]

At any rate, the product looks like a low-cost and easy to use solution, one that is likely to be attractive to small offices. But I have a hard time understanding why folks wouldn't simply use public networks -- AIM, MSN, Yahoo -- instead of a LAN solution. However, since I haven't looked into whether AIM and the others support Bulgarian and other exotic languages, so it could well be that that alone is enough to make a market for Leadmind.


:: Stowe Boyd 4/25/2003 05:41:03 PM [link] ::
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Email from Bill Cullen, CEO of Webb, responding to a question from Alan

I posted an email interchange with Rob Balgley re: the new round of funding that Jabber received recently, and a reader named Alan asked a question about Webb, one of the investors in Jabber:

Does this recent round of funding truly ensure that Webb is not going out of business now, or is there still a scenario that this might happen?

Webb is just one of the investors in Jabber, and its ownership of Jabber has fallen to 46% after this recent financing. Webb's sole asset is ownership of Jabber stock (see their 10-K).


I received the following from Bill Cullen, Webb's CEO:

Mr Boyd:

Please refer to the company's form 10-K filed with the SEC earlier this month. As reported, Webb's financial resources as a holding company comfortably extend to mid-year 2005 which we believe is adequate to accomodate a major liquidity event such as a public offering of Jabber stock. The recent financing in Jabber is more than sufficient to support Jabber operations through breakeven.

Thank you for your interest and, in the future, please feel free to contact me directly.

Bill Cullen

:: Stowe Boyd 4/24/2003 02:08:41 PM [link] ::
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SourceID announces SourceID.NET Open Source project

SourceID announces a .NET initiative, with parallel goals to the existing Java project:

"While a Java-based toolkit integrates well into many web applications, web application developers using Microsoft's .Net technologies desire an equally well-integrated set of tools for Federated Identity Exchange. The goals are otherwise the same as the Java Edition of SourceID - to provide a set of simple tools to with a simple API that does the heavy lifting required for integrating support for protocols such as Liberty."

:: Stowe Boyd 4/24/2003 11:18:14 AM [link] ::
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Jamie Lewis and the World of Means

Jamie Lewis of the Burton Group takes an interesting contrarian view of the World of Ends discussion that Doc Searles and David Weinberger have started up.

Doc and David are saying that people continue to be dumb about the Internet and its value, and focus on the wrong things. The value of the Internet grows at it ends, out at the edges, and those who think about it in some centralized, controlled fashion miss the point. There's a gazillion unregulated innovative things happening on the Internet, and these additively extend its value. Those who try to resist this will fail.

Lewis riffs on the tone and target of the World of Ends as a staging ground for a interesting discussion of digital identity -- why business will have a big role, what individuals want, and maybe how we will get there:

"Customers do business with companies that reside in the Worlds of Means, for example. In that world, some companies are clueful, many of them are not. But all of them have a business to run. And all of them have legitimate business issues that require digital identity that can't simply be written off as "BigCo stuff," as the Cluetrain crowd sometimes does. And unless they're particularly paranoid and refuse to give any identity information to anyone at any time—and there are a few of those out there—people do business with governments as well. Governments tend to be slow, but are a fact of life. We can argue over what governments should or shouldn't do with identity information, but not whether they're a factor in this discussion.

In other words, both of these worlds have legitimate needs for digital identity, and those worlds must interact. That means we need both standards for defining identity and an infrastructure for creating, using, and managing identity. By the way, the infrastructure isn't just about technology. It's also about process and people: who's involved, who can do what, who's accountable, and how accountability manifests itself."

He quotes Searles from a recent Linux Journal article:

". . . A new identity infrastructure—one provided by open APIs, protocols and other standards that serve no agenda other than to enable useful dealings between buyers and sellers of products and services. Like the Web and e-mail infrastructure that are already part of the Net, this new infrastructure would be a full-fledged service on the Net. And it won't become that unless it's something nobody owns, everybody can use and anybody can improve. Again, like the Web, e-mail and the Net itself."

He argues that the WorldofEnders take a customer-centric (perhaps individual-centric would be better) view while businesses and governments have legitimate interests in managing identity proofs, digital and otherwise. Lewis concludes that we will need to have all ends of the spectrum, personal, corporate, and government.

I concur, but the innovation is coming from the edges, where the heat is. Let's make sure we have the personal identity stuff up and running before the government wakes up and tries to co-opt the whole thing.

:: Stowe Boyd 4/24/2003 10:39:19 AM [link] ::
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The Paradox of Privacy

Nod to Eric Norlin who tipped me to a interesting piece at C/Net on personal privacy, The Paradox of Privacy by Michael Kanellos. It touches on some comments I made a few months back about 'Googling' people (see A Nation of Voyeurs). He quotes a friend who works at a security software company, who said

"Whenever I have a job interview, I look up any real estate owned by the interviewer, so I don't lowball myself in salary negotiations."

There's some job-hunting advice we should all use.

Anyway: it seems you can find out almost anything about anybody.

:: Stowe Boyd 4/24/2003 10:17:33 AM [link] ::
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Another Corporate Instant Messaging Play: Leadmind's PopMessenger

Got an announcement today about the 1.50 release of Leadmind's PopMessenger (see www.leadmind.com).

Offhand -- although the website omits a number of English articles and garbles phrases (as in "Please note: You should update previously installed versions for proper work of PopMessenger 1.50" -- the product sounds interesting, and it has garnered a number of shareware awards.

I plan to chat with the CEO, and find out more about it.

:: Stowe Boyd 4/23/2003 03:51:41 PM [link] ::
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Americans dropping out of the Web according to Pew Internet Study

I read at "Real Time" at the Wall Street Journal that a lot of Americans are giving up on the Interent after trying it out. The authors relate the results of a Pew study: "Pew found that about 80 million Americans, or 43% of the adult population, aren't Internet users. Of those, about one-fifth formerly used the Internet but no longer do."

Why? 15% of the dropouts didn't like it, found that it wasn't useful or interesting, didn't have time to use it, or thought it wasn't a good use of time. That's about 1 million (15% x 20% x 80 million). Yikes.

"A large chunk of Internet dropouts stopped using the Net because they didn't find it to be a compelling service or use of their time. In percent of total Net dropouts:

No longer have or have use of a computer 19%
Didn't like it/want it/not interesting or useful 13
Didn't have time to use it/wasn't a good use of my time 12
Moved, can no longer get local access 9
Can no longer get to the place I used to get access 8
Computer broke 6
Problems with my Internet connection 5
Don't need it 5
Changed or lost job/lost access at work 5
Can no longer use machine due to disability or illness 2
Too much information online/too confusing 1
Worried about privacy on the Internet 1
Disturbed by content (porn) 1
Too hard to use 1

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Tracking Survey"

I feel for those too ill, or too poor, to dig into the Internet. I even feel for those confused, or worried about privacy and porn. But those that don't find it interesting drive me crazy.

Here's what I wrote to the columnists -- maybe they'll post it:

"It's possible to assert that the Internet is just a channel for information, which is something like saying sex is just a way to perpetuate the species. The reality is that for many, active participation in the Internet through social software, blogging, or just reading plain vanilla web sites has become a source of joy of their lives, and one which could not easily be satisfied otherwise. Marshall McLuhan argued in Media: The Extensions of Man that as we participate in new media we "rationalize" our perception of the world. As we add the written word, so we come to rely less on the spoken word. As we spend more time on the Internet, we spend less time watching television.

While some people will try and then reject the web for personal reasons, that doesn't mean we should simply chalk it up to personal tastes. My feeling is that people should read great literature, and that they are lessened by choosing not to experience such things. The Internet is evolving in ways that will force us to directly experience it if we are to understand its message. The Internet is not an electric newspaper, an infinity of corporate brochures, or even a global library. It is a world of minds, made of millions of vital conversations.

Those who tried eBay once and didn't like it, or who set up an email account but then never received any email, and gave up -- these people will miss out on what is a revolution in human communication and understanding. Just like some people choose never to buy books, don't listen to great music, and won't eat foreign food. It seems a benign choice, but it's inherently limiting and backwards looking."

:: Stowe Boyd 4/23/2003 02:16:02 PM [link] ::
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Patti Anklam's Blogging

Bumped into Patti today, after a year. She IMed me through the "I'm online" button on this blog, so I'm happy I fiddled with the javascript to make it work.

She says some nice things about my Darwin piece(Get Real) at her blog.

I met Stowe at KMWorld a few years ago, we connected on a couple of fronts, and we had a terrific brainstorming session with David Weinberger of Joho and the Cluetrain Manifesto fame. It was too much fun. In Get Real, Stowe delves into the implications of embedding presence awareness into the deep infrastructure of business -- not just people, but objects like printers, the location of parts, and documents in a review cycle. From a social network analysis perspective, imagine not only knowing what your network looks like, but also being able to know at the same time which of the people in that network are currently online and available, and where they are.


Stowe has named his new business A Working Model. Wish I'd thought of that.

Perhaps more interesting is the fact that she learned of the article from Nancy White's onlinefacilitation group where a discussion of the article has been going on. Fun.

:: Stowe Boyd 4/23/2003 10:19:52 AM [link] ::
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Reuters' Sandra Shih on The State of Instant Messaging in Financial Services

I spoke briefly with Sandra (Director, Product Development) today, to get an update of what's going on at Reuters Messaging group, and her perspective on the industry.

• David Gurle, formerly of Microsoft, now the executive vice president and global head of Collaboration Services at Reuters, is jet-setting back and forth, and will not be based in NYC until July.
  
• Although David advocates the existance of a third party, independent digital identity management across all IM solutions, it seem that this has not become a part of Reuters business plan. At least, not yet. Reuters does plan to support interoperability widely, however, although to date Mindalign has been the only announced service or product that Reuters has announced interoperability with. The company is in discussion with all the obvious public services and products.
  
• The financial services market is still in the formative period. Although the value proposition for instant messaging and associated collaboraiton has won over this sector, companies are still not asking for super-sophisticated services, like video conferencing, voice-over-IP, and so on. Sandra says that maybe 1 in 10 asks for anything along those lines.
  
• Reuters view of FIMA (Financial Services Instant Messaging Association) is that it's great for the industry. The members, while competitors, can work together to advance mutual aims, like interoperability.
  
• Sandra believes that the market is waiting for Greenwich to launch before rolling out major initiatives to build on real time collaboration. IBM has apparently not been pushing Sametime as an independent IM product, instead focusing on larger scale solutions. And the market wants to see what these two big boys are going to do before moving too fast.

I also asked about the Reuters ads that I have heard on National Public Radio. In a strange twist, the ads -- which have generated a lot of good press and good leads for Reuters -- were apparently the brainchild of a former Reuters employee, and today no one knows who it was who made the deal with NPR: just one indicator of the cost of churn whenever a company goes through a lot of downsizing and reorganization.


:: Stowe Boyd 4/21/2003 03:57:49 PM [link] ::
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PresenceWorks "I'm ONLINE" button

I have added the PresenceWorks online javascript to my blog. Ping me if you dare!

The cool thing is that it pull my presence from either AOL or MSN, or both. I thought they used to have a Yahoo connection too, but it doesn't seem to be there anymore.




By the way, getting the javascript to make this work was hard. The PW website creates it only as an Outlook signature file, which I had to fiddle with to get the script out.

:: Stowe Boyd 4/21/2003 03:19:35 PM [link] ::
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The Naming of Names

Microsoft has announced the new name for Greenwich -- the real time colloration server it has had in beta for some time: Real-Time Communications Server 2003 Standard Edition. Yikes. I like Greenwich better.


:: Stowe Boyd 4/21/2003 11:13:47 AM [link] ::
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Equaintance

Gary Turner coins a useful term - "equaintance" -- to represent digital acquaintanceship. As he puts it, more than "I know of him" and less than "I know him." All in the context of Friendster-style 'friendship'.

:: Stowe Boyd 4/21/2003 11:07:03 AM [link] ::
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Digital insecurity and group-forming

A piece by Adina Levin, Digital insecurity and group-forming, is of interest relative to a piece I am working on for Darwin. She uses the expression "digital insecurity" for "the anxiety you feel about asking a colleague to be your "friend" or "contact" on Ryze and similar systems" (citing Kellan, Snowdeal, deus_x, and raster as her sources).

The unnaturalness of this request to be friends is offputting, and childish-feeling.

At any rate, asking people to be friends is the wrong directional. Instead of asking you to be my friend, I should be able to declare that I trust you, or admire you in a specific domain, such as technical knowledge. Others who trust me and my viewpoints could then -- by inference -- trust yours. And conversely, since I trust you, I could allow you to take advantage of certain aspects of that trust, such as contacting through me those that trust me.

Trust networks are a well-understood social anthropological technique, and much more helpful to understanding group dynamics than 'friendship'. Ryze and the other social networking systes need to build up a more trust oriented approach. The web pages for individuals are too limiting -- and should be replaced with blogs or equivalents. Participation in Ryze interest groups is not a replacement for blog-based cameraderie.

:: Stowe Boyd 4/21/2003 10:05:10 AM [link] ::
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Jon Udell on Blog Scope

A recent post by Jon Udell caught my eye, "Blogs, scopes, and human routers". his observation is that people using overlapping scopes -- groups of different sizes and memberships -- for distinct purposes.

He cites the example of Microsoft's Chris Anderson posting info in his public blog copied from an in-house blog for the purpose of gaining the insights of outside experts:

One reason I believe that blogs are great for corporation internal communication is the question of distribution lists. Inside of Microsoft we live and die by email. However the constant spam of email to large distribution lists ends up drowning out the important information. For many types of communication (but not all) blogs provide a better way of communicating. There are many cases where you as the publisher of a piece of information don't know who would be interested. Blogs are a way to "publish and forget" - you fire the information out there, and interested people will find it. Once I add our internal blog server to the corporate search service, suddenly I could find people that worked on products that I wanted to communicate with. Amazing. [SimpleGeek]

I will always honor Chris for "publish-and-forget".

One of the many types of communication that is better than email is "centering" -- one or more people collectively definining what they are up to, and then doing it -- and another is "edging" -- where one or more people are publishing what they are up to, in order to get inputs, insights, and inspiration from other people or groups. Email is really not very good for carrying on group conversations: basically a broadcast or point-to-point medium. Centering and edging require conversation.

:: Stowe Boyd 4/21/2003 08:49:47 AM [link] ::
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Super Blog Stuff: Groping for Com-Unity

I have recently laid on a batch of tiny little tools for this blog.

Note, over ther in the left hand margin, my blogroll, now powered by BlogRolling.com. For several of the entries -- those whose authors have registered at BlogRolling.com -- moving your cursor over them will lead to seeing when those blogs were most recently updated. Neat.

I also added a search tool that can search my blog, the web, or the blogs of those folks in my blogroll. (Note that this blogroll has to be either in BlogRolling.com format or a RadioLand OML feed.)

I have added easy-to-fiddle-with comments courtesy of BlogBack, which provide all sorts of neat features, the best of which is email notification of responses.

Anyway, its wonderful to be able to layer on these small additional capabilities, heading towards a better linkage between what I am scribbling about, people reading it, finding others writing about similar stuff, and ultimately moving toward a unified suite of tools that help this process.

However, I am dissatified: there are glaring missing pieces because these tiny little tools all do one tiny little thing.

I want a unified mechanism for karma, or digital reputation, or as Cory Doctorow calls it, whuffie. This will require digital identity management, and a brokered interface to it. For example, let's say I register as a member of a well-defined (or even loosely defined) community of interest. I want to comment on Timing, for example. I could signal (in some fashion) that I would allow the Timing commenting tool to a/ access my existing karma (and other interesting attributes, like email address and name), and b/ submit karma information based on other's comments.

Karma is some ways reflects expertise, so the work going on at the Xpertweb project may be cogent.

The soul of a community is Q&A, as I recently wrote (see IBM Community Tools: The Soul of Real-Time Communities?). But how can you know a/ who to ask, and b/ who is credible?

I hope that this becomes one of the topics we push into at the Social Software Alliance.

:: Stowe Boyd 4/20/2003 08:28:53 AM [link] ::
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