One Billion Hosts and Nothing’s On!

According to Mookie Tenembaum’s latest piece, “The real secret of achieving long “real time spent” is in providing the consumer with something MORE than just the ad message”.

What’s this mean? Content sites can’t just put an ad in front of people without some substantial content attached. It’s a fair exchange – I watch a 15 second car ad on Cnet, for example, for a two minute discussion of the latest digital camera trends by a respected reviewer. Actually, I’m not tuning in to watch the ad, but I am watching it anyway. By gum, isn’t that just like TV?

So how much can customers tolerate – the average length of streaming video is 2.5 minutes with one (or several) ad, total running time 10 seconds max.

So why are publishers complaining about bleeding ink? They’ve already got the editors, writers, and customers reading their magazines and newspapers – all they have to do is put them in short interesting videos talking about what they do!

Of course, there’s that bugbear of “short interesting videos”. Last time I talked with a publisher, I heard all about “that video guy” who never delivered, never finished on deadline, and never made anything interesting. I guess that’s why I work for ExecProducer and use MinutePitch for polished videos in minutes. Because I can’t wait around for “that video guy” – time is money.

Why Women Don’t Like IT?

Ed Frauenheim of cnet put together an article on why women have trouble with IT. So I start talking, and before I know it I’m sitting in CNET’s letters section next to one of RMS’s rants. Good show!

It’s a good article, and I’m pleased to see this subject is starting to be discussed more. When I wrote about this serious loss of women in computing (SF Chronicle, Sept2003, Paving the Way for Systers reflecting on the passing of Anita Borg and the impact of women on technology, I found a real dearth of discussion of this issue in the mainstream and technical press – it was viewed solely as a “woman’s issue” relegated to the margins. Yet I received a great deal of email, both from women and men who have lived with this problem when the article appeared – much more than usually is received. And what they shared with quite striking.

You Can Have it All – Unless You Want to Retire

Sue Hutchinson wrote a nice article that discusses the closing of the gender gap in longevity. But I’m hopefull for a followup. Seems that there’s serious talk in the social security reform set of taking into account women’s “longer” lifespans by reducing benefits (e.g. Meet the Press last month) right when we don’t seem to have that edge anymore:

“MR. RUSSERT: Do you think Congress, Mr. Chairman, would accept any formula that said that people would be treated differently because of their gender or their race?
REP. THOMAS: If we discuss it and the will is not to do it, fine. At least we discussed it. To simply raise the age and find out that you’ve got gender, race and occupational problems later, I would not be doing the kind of service that I think I have to do. You and I have been around quite a while. We went through the ’80s. We went into the ’90s. And now we’re in the 21st century. We saw the choices that were made in the past. We went to the well over and over again with the same old solutions which really aren’t solutions. We’ve reached the point where we have to fundamentally examine it in my opinion. The president has given us that opportunity. We ought to take it.”

So what if there is no “longer” lifespan for women within the next 30 years if these factors Sue described continue? The reset for social security is then based on an outdated premise? Coupled with lower lifetime earnings by women, looks like the reforms in social security could create a new subclass of permanently improverished women.

The Limits to Internet Media is the Content

Fascinating little keynote at Imedia Summit by Lincoln Millstein, COO of New York Times Digital on the future of media.

Mr. Millstein sees “Big Iron Publishing” – the presses and paper and trucks and newsroom – as being nonscalable and noncompetitive compared to Internet media. Also, inventory of content is the burning limiting factor to encourage more interaction and stickiness with a site’s audience.

What Makes a Great Venture? It’s the team, execution, and trust…

John Doerr spoke with his usual inspirational passion at the Stanford Entreprenuerial “Thought Leaders” seminar. He asked “What makes a great venture?”. Well, I’ve been around the startup block a few times or more, so that’s easy – team and application. “What makes a great company?” How about focus and execution. And “What makes a great group?” Piece of cake – interdependence and communications. And most importantly – trust.

I’ve heard most of this stuff time and time again, so I was jazzed he wanted to skip a lot of the canned presentation and move on to questions. So my question that got written under the biz catagory was:
“WSJ reported last week that ad revenues are finally moving substantially to Internet / online from print. Does this mean, as some claim, we’re in a “second Internet bubble”, or do you think it’s just the promise of the first Internet rush finally realized – in other words, it just took longer than expected.”

While a lot of others were of the “gee, what’s hot to invest in” and “how about my pet venture” variety (and dispatched quickly), mine made him pause a while and think about it. Can you see why?

Open Source Software Patents an Oxymoron?

“Recent events have drawn attention to the intersecting realms of patents and open-source software. IBM has donated 500 patents for use in open-source software, Sun plans to liberate 1,600 for use with its open-source Solaris operating system, and a Hewlett-Packard executive believed in 2002 that Microsoft planned to attack rival open-source projects with its patents,” according to Stephen Shankland of Cnet. That should be good, right?

Linus Torvalds, Brian Behlendorf and Mitch Kapor don’t think so. Even with donations of patents and white knights like IBM to protect Linux, other companies like Microsoft could launch a patent attack that could devastate open source. “We have to be concerned about…the use of patent WMDs. That will be the last stand of Microsoft,” said Kapor.

Aside from the melodrama, is there a case for the granting of software patents? Back in the 1980’s, when Unix was in its heyday, software patents were not filed because software was considered a collection of algorithms (not patentable) that was “expressed” in a unique form similar to that of a book or music. Hence, software was protected under copyright and trade secret status.

It seems inevitable that the success of open source spawned the boom in software patent filings, since trade secrets can no longer be maintained in open source and copyrights are routinely ignored. Patents are published but provide the grantee with exclusive ownership of the process for close to two decades. This made sense when hardware manufacturing processes and inventions might take many years to finance and develop, but not in the case of an intangible like software.

I expect there will be more filings – not less – for software patents. In operating systems alone I routinely review patents that are mere windowdressed versions of basic virtual memory, filesystem, stack, and driver functions that predate my involvement at Berkeley. The temptation to file by big entities (remember – “PatentLand” is pay-to-play) is just too great.

Perhaps a very short-term protection status for software patents (like three years) with a separate fast-track review process might be a far more reasonable solution to the current dilemma.

Girls and Science – the Hard Costs of Pushback

Recently there has been a stormy controversy about women and their abilities in math and the sciences, including astronomy and physics coming out of Harvard. Harvard’s President Summers, in an unguarded (or simply unthinking) moment, decided that the reason there are fewer women in science than men must have a “biological” component – in other words, women must be inferior to men in science. QED. Quite an intellectual tour-de-force, but since he’s a big guy I guess he could get away with it (I doubt any woman in academia could).

But a recent discussion on the astronomy lists caused me to actually put down in writing why a lot of girls abandon science and engineering – it’s simple clear nasty misogyny – that’s hatred of women, for those who don’t know. Yes, like other awful human vices like bigotry and racism and religious hatred, it cuts through all levels of society and cuts through it’s victim’s souls like a knife. But ordinarily in balanced civilized environments (that’s called “diversity”), people who try to indulge their private vices get pushback – from their coworkers, friends, and bosses – fast and hard. So going over the line has a price.

Fun Friday: Gopher Traps, Pet Rocks and Wozniak, Tsunami Science, and Women’s Video

Well, it seems fitting that we end the week, not with a bang but with the hard slam shut of a Macabee gopher trap. You heard me – gopher traps. Turns out at the Los Gatos History Museum roundtable last night we got to hear how Los Gatos was the leader in innovative gopher traps, and it’s rather humbling to learn that after one hundred years they still are selling them. This certainly contrasted with Gary Dahl’s Pet Rock (another Los Gatos invention), which didn’t last more than a year – but oh, what a year it was. I still remember all those silly rocks sold in stores and thinking how crazy adults were to buy them.

One of the more amusing moments of the roundtable occurred when the moderator carefully presented all of the other speakers, and then forgot to present their star speaker Steve Wozniak. But Steve more than made up for the lapse by talking nonstop about innovation, his time at HP, and why he loves building things. And I suppose that was the motivation for everyone sitting in that room – we all like to build things and make things better. Oh, and the free food behind the gopher trap display after the chatfest helped.

In other news, the scientific impact of the Indian Ocean tsumani is just beginning to be grasped – “NASA scientists using data from the Indonesian earthquake calculated it affected Earth’s rotation, decreased the length of day, slightly changed the planet’s shape, and shifted the North Pole by centimeters.” Simply incredible.

Finally, Internet video is finally making real inroads, especially among women. iVillage announced that it has redesigned its Web site and “visitors to the women-focused site now see video offerings on each Web page”. According to Peter Naylor, SVP Sales, “Demand is outstripping supply. I would love to get more video inventory”. Videos are preceded by a 15-second ad from the likes of Kraft, Microsoft and NBC.

Haven’t I always said “It’s the content”. And women, who are often viewed as less tech-saavy than men, seem to be leading the trend here. Not surprising – I’m a woman too. Have a great weekend.

Give Me That Old Homebrew Computer Club

Doug Millison of SiliconValleyWatcher reminisces about the HomeBrew Computer Club. Now, I wasn’t a member, but my husband William Jolitz used to show up now and then at SLAC for the meetings when he could get away from Berkeley and BSD work. So he added a little to the collective memory.

From William’s comments: “It’s great to see some of the Homebrew Computer Club Newsletters online – in fact, I’ve still got a coupon for the Byte Store that fell out of one when I was showing it to my kids. Think anyone will honor it?”

“Seriously, we’re also old DDJ (Dr. Dobbs Journal) fans – I remember the first issues of DDJ and the “running light” slogan well. That’s why a decade later had so many HCC and DDJ references, including Tiny 386BSD (see From 386BSD to OSPREY: The Evolution of an Operating System), an entire Berkeley Unix system on a single floppy that old-style Unix guys said “couldn’t be done” (just like how Tom Pittman’s Tiny BASIC from itty bitty machines tipped the old BASIC monopoly in the 1970’s).”

“The slogan Running Light with 386BSD appearing in DDJ after a 17-part series on “Porting Unix to the 386”, completing a project begun in 1989 with “386BSD: A Modest Proposal” for Berkeley and DDJ, and ending with the 386BSD 1.0 Reference CDROM from DDJ (1994-1997), along with books and videos running to this day.”

“386BSD was intentionally biased towards the DDJ hobbyist / reader – not the old-style Unix guru. We don’t regret it – we really had a blast, just like the old HCC days. William Jolitz.”

Is President Bush Good for Tech?

James Fallows of the NY Times served up a very interesting article analyzing the Bush administration’s impact on technology. I’m pleased to see someone apply a bit of intellectual rigor and careful reading of history to an article (so rare nowadays – most journalists seem to believe the Internet and press releases are accurate), and observe that technology initiatives are driven by many interests over time (industry, government, investment, military,…), and not usually a quick doc by a particular administration. It is well-worth reading.

I do believe Mr. Fallows has omitted two critical groups that have influenced inexpensive access to information more than all the others – the American taxpayer and the American free press.