Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

Blog Archive » The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head

With this post I bring to the close my first “blog book. It began with the post referenced above. My first book reflects the somewhat raucous history of three years and seven months in the bloggosphere. With the next post I start a new era in my life and in this blog, devoting myself to the exploration of OPML and new forms of computing made possible by large-scale networks of XML web services. These are inventions that I believe are as revolutionary to the web of today as Hypertext was to the early days of personal computing.

Three years and seven months ago, on March 29, 2003, Dave Winer and I sat at the Berkman Center and fired up my new blog. We were both Fellows, and we shared a very small office on the third floor of the victorian building on the Harvard campus that housed the center.

On April 1, the next day, I made the above post linking to a small paper, a work-in-progress, about how citizens are joining together to become a force in international relations, the governence of the world. In short, how people are working together to shape the future. I focused on (1) informal networks of people who care, (2) the web and interactive media “neurology” which is giving these networks a kind of collective mind and ability to act, and (3) the advance of international institutions and international law, which provides a venue or a forum in which these networks join with sympathetic allies to advance specific causes.

I am commited to digital entrepreneurship in developing nations, as well as to public health and health care initiatives. The bloggosphere, now that I was a part of it, played a rapidly growing and ultimately profound role in everything I was doing.

In 2003 I joined Howard Dean’s campaign for president.

I also continued to worked on human rights action on the web.

In Spring of 2004 I helped start a web-based campaign–still unsuccessful but still alive and growing–to stop the genocide in Darfur.

That campaign was inspired during a session hosted by Joi Ito and Ethan Zuckerman at the first Blogger.con, in response to a challenge by Brit Blaser that each of us take a nation and help get the bloggosphere focused outside of itself.

Through these experiences and more, I was provided some priceless opportunities to join with other creative folks and experiment with social and technical innovation on a large scale, with a fast pace, and with a relentless dedication to pushing the social and the technical orders to their limits.

I continue to be involved in social and cultural change projects. Like many others, I see the latest US election as a positive result of the continuing creativity and effectiveness of progressive socio-technical visionaries and organizers.

However, my main work these days is inventing technology. This is technology for activists, technology for the mind of the second superpower. But it is technology per se. My days are spent designing plumbing and plumbing fixtures (metaphorically speaking) for the web.

Thus I want a blog where I can consider technology visions and challenges and develop a conversation with people who share this interest. This address seems a good place to start it. Guy Kawasaki says that the first rule of blogging is to envision what you are doing as “writing a book.” So this will be my new book!

I hope those of you who are current subscribers stay with me, as I have truly enjoyed our journey together. Even if you do not consider yourself a technologist, please stay if you find yourself at all interested!

I plan to start another blog to focus on human rights, health care, and other primarily social topics, so some of you may want to join me there. I will let you know that address in the next few days.

Thanks, all! Thanks so much for the memories, for the support, and for the criticism. It was all good.

Much love (yea, that is how I feel, so I will say it), Jim

This is BCG – Time Based Competition

Time-based competition has always been critical, but in Web 2.0 it may be the most important dimension of competition.  BCG has worked on this for many years, and has some good shortcuts and visual aids to help an organization focus on time.

Here is a packet of BCG white papers.  One that is fun to see is by Shikhar Ghosh and Gary Reiner.

The most useful visual aid is a chart that shows when a competitor introduces a product, and when one’s own company introduces it, and makes visible the lag.

The most useful idea, I think, is that one needs to create a platform for launching products quickly and continuously.  This is how Toyota and others think about their manufacturing, human resources, robotics, design, and parts-sharing strategies: That is, how much scope can we get from these assets?  And how quickly can we express that scope in market introductions?

By contrast, Detroit tends to see platforms as continually being improved, in order to be able to launch the next generation of product.  New features are “put on the product development schedule” and platform capabilities are designed, developed, tested, and finally put into operation and expressed in products.

What is missing is the kind of thinking that says, “Hey, from our existing platform, what scope can we get?  What new products?  How fast?

And, in addition, “How can we think about development as creating core capabilities that can be shared across many potential products?”

Finally, “How can we use others’ platforms–begged, borrowed, outsourced-to, or stolen, to add immediate scope to our offerings?”

copyright.com – Google Search

Lots of action in the online copyright realm.  The New York Times now has one-click quick-buy licensing of items from the current newspaper, by way of Copyright.com

 http://www.copyright.com/

 http://www.copyright.com/ccc/do/viewPage?pageCode=au118

Here is an excerpt from the press release on the corporate solution:

Copyright Clearance Center Announces Rightsphere™: First Comprehensive Rights Advisory & Management Solution for Content Users and Librarians

Web-based Service Bridges Gap between Knowledge Sharing and Copyright Compliance

DANVERS, MA, June 8, 2006 — Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), the world’s largest provider of text licensing solutions, today announced the launch of Rightsphere™, a revolutionary Web-based rights advisory and management service that helps corporations promote collaboration and the free flow of published information while respecting copyright.

The first-of-its-kind service, which will debut June 11 at the Annual Conference of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) in Baltimore, is a major advance for companies that place high value on knowledge sharing and innovation. Rightsphere provides a customized, comprehensive view of all rights assets held by a business and delivers unambiguous answers to the common employee question: “What can I do with this content?”

“Rightsphere goes right to the heart of the fear, confusion and complexity that stifle companies from unleashing the value of the content they obtain,” says Chuck Richard, Vice President & Lead Analyst, Outsell, Inc. “It is a rights performance solution with a major productivity upside that knocks aside the logs in the corporate rights-clearing logjam. It captures CCC’s deep understanding of the value of content and the value of rights within an elegant solution for enterprises: deliver more game-changing content to employees with less rights angst and busywork.”

Rightsphere makes information about a company’s content reuse rights instantly available to employees at their desktops, dramatically reducing the time it takes to verify copyright permissions. By consolidating all of these rights assets in a single, easy-to-access repository, Rightsphere enables librarians and information professionals to organize and manage rights by country, city or department. These rights can come from many sources, including CCC’s annual licenses and per-use permissions, licenses obtained directly from publishers, aggregators and other information providers and licenses purchased from rights organizations in other countries. Utilizing Rightsphere’s powerful administrative application, content and license managers can easily add, modify and delete records about publications, rights conditions and other content information.

Global pharmaceutical companies Novartis and AstraZeneca both are working with CCC as charter customers for Rightsphere. Deborah Juterbock, global head of the Novartis Knowledge Center, calls Rightsphere “a key element in our copyright and corporate compliance policies.”

Market Need
CCC designed Rightsphere for organizations that view collaboration as a key driver of innovation and growth. With so much information available at the speed of a keystroke, it has never been easier to copy, forward or e-mail content to anyone, at any time. But regularly distributing content without copyright permission violates most corporations’ IP compliance policies and conflicts with copyright law. Many companies instruct employees to ask corporate library staff for permission before they share published documents. This is a time-consuming process that disrupts employee workflow, consumes hours of librarian time and ultimately slows collaboration and innovation.

To avoid this delay, some employees distribute articles without waiting for permission, violating ethics policies and exposing organizations to claims of copyright infringement. In response, some companies institute restrictive policies on information sharing, hampering the company’s higher mission: to learn and grow. “That’s why it’s never been more important for companies to know what rights they have, and to give their employees access to them—quickly and easily,” says CCC Vice President of Marketing Bill Burger.

“Rightsphere is designed for today’s knowledge economy, in which information collaboration is critical,” says Burger. “Published documents are shared among coworkers, customers and business partners at ever-increasing rates, but old methods of rights approval and rights management have failed to keep pace. Rightsphere addresses a company’s need to boost
knowledge and innovation through better use of its information assets, while also complying with its own ethical and legal policies.”

Wordpress really has a problem with comment spam.

There seems no way to stop it. Shutting off comments would seem to be the obvious solution, but seems not to be effective at stopping the spam.
I am new to the admin functions, so I may not have shut off comments successfully.  On the other hand, it seems spammers can submit spam regardless of setting.

My email box is completely wiped out by notifications from Wordpress that I have comments to moderate–despite my not choosing to accept any comments.

Wordpress has a vibrant community writing add-ons, and has many good features.

But it would be nice if it dealt better with spam.

One of the gentlest giants of information and communications technology was John Davis. A leading scientist and executive at AT&T Bell Laboratories, John was a pioneer of digital networks and mobile communications. Dr. Davis began his career at Bell Labs and spent 35 years in numerous positions, culminating in his role as Chief Technology Officer of AT&T Communications Services.

John represented a generation of scientists who were nurtured within the Bell System and found ways to serve their country and communities, as well as their company. Born in 1938 in Kentucky, John earned a bachelor’s of science degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology in electrical engineering. Upon graduation he took a job with Bell Laboratories, as well as earned a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, also in the field of electrical engineering.

Within Bell Labs and AT&T, John participated in numerous telecommunications innovations, including creating the technology development process that is used to introduce new technology into the AT&T Global Network, spearheading the marketing and management of research and development performed by AT&T for the Federal Government, including military and intelligence systems and special government telecom networks. In the 1970’s he conceived the architecture of the Bell System’s major digital switching system (the “5ESS”), and shaped its development. In the 1980’s he led the commercialization and installation of AT&T’s first cellular systems in the United States.

Following his career at Bell Labs he became an advisor on technology and strategy, as well as an entrepreneur. Each new wave of technology brought new delights. John was a founder and Principal of the Technology Advisors Group, working with investors, boards and management teams of high tech companies. He was CTO of Allied Riser Communications, a broadband IP-based communications provider. He served as a Principal at GeoPartners Research consulting to senior executives of Fortune 50 companies. He was a member of several boards of directors, including Novatel Wireless, Inc. (Nasdaq:NVTL).

John authored numerous technical publications and was granted several patents. He was elected Fellow of the IEEE in recognition of his leadership in digital switching and was elected Fellow of the Radio Club of America for his pioneering work in wireless communication.

John was gracious, radiating the warmth and soft accent of his Kentucky roots. He was a large man whose calming presence was sought out in tandem with his technical expertise. In his later years he increasingly devoted himself to the cause of young companies and young entrepreneurs. He served on the Board of Overseers of the engineering school of the University of Pennsylvania. He was a natural teacher and guide. Until he became ill, he was working on a plan to form a new technology strategy firm with a mission to educate young technologists. He often reflected that many of his most satisfying experiences were working in teams with the youngest of contributors. He took particular joy in the physics lessons he was able to share with his grandson.

John was an active volunteer fireman and Emergency Medical Technician in his New Jersey township for 35 years. He counted as his closest friends his fellow firemen and EMTs. When his current illness reached a critical stage a few weeks ago, it was these friends who scrambled the local ambulance to race John up the Garden State Parkway to help. It was these same fellow volunteers who brought him home from the hospital this past Friday.

John was devoted to and is survived by his wife Beverly, son Rob, and his daughter Christina, as well as his grandson. His family was with him when he died Sunday evening.

Jim Moore, Monday, November 20, 2006

John’s daughter Christie wrote this Saturday:

..the Fair Haven First Aid Squad brought dad home yesterday and inaugurated the new ambulance to get him. It will go on the “run log” as the ambulance’s first run–to bring my beloved father homeward bound. He was so proud of that and he stared out the back of the ambulance as we broke every law in the book–they flashed the sirens in the rush-hour of the Garden State Parkway and created a fourth lane for my father. And, by chance, we passed by the two streets on which he spent most of his life in Fair Haven, and he nodded as I said their names and smiled….

Our friend John Davis, a wonderful person, a man of great gentleness, a teacher of young people, a senior scientist of the communications revolution, who worked much of his life at Bell Laboratories, died a few minutes ago.

Open Source Risk Solutions | Open Source Risk Management | OSRM
..:: OPEN SOURCE RISK MANAGEMENT SERVICES

OSRM’s proprietary open source risk assessment process can help your organization resolve current risk issues and protect itself from possible license infringements. As a user of open source, some of the issues that you might face include:

..:: Inadvertent distribution of proprietary software which contains open source code
..:: Loss of intellectual property value as a result of being forced to “open source” your proprietary software
..:: Expenses required to rewrite or replace software which infringes on an open source license

In the past two years, over 30 claims involving open source license infringement have been brought against corporations large and small. In every case, the plaintiffs have prevailed in enforcing their rights to the use of their software. In some instances, corporations have been forced to release their proprietary software to the open source community (see “Open Source and the Legend of Linksys”). In other cases, corporations have been forced to cease and desist distribution of proprietary software that contains open source code (see gpl-violations.org).

Whether you are a large or small enterprise, software vendor, or intellectual property insurance broker, OSRM can help you and your clients conquer these challenges. Our Compliance Services team offers a variety of open source risk management products and services:

..:: open source compliance insurance. Providing annual, renewable or M&A transaction coverage for license compliance.

..:: Risk assessment and mitigation consulting. Know your risk by identifying and managing it.

..:: License compliance audits. An ideal solution for M&A transactions.

..:: Best practices development and training. Drive compliance throughout your organization.

It is not that large companies care about Linux developers per se, what IBM and Dell and HP and others care about is being able to freely use the free software in their multi-billion-dollar global OEM and sytems integration businesses.

O’Reilly Network — U.S. Patent Reform Bill: An Interview with Mark Webbink
U.S. Patent Reform Bill: An Interview with Mark Webbink
by Richard Koman
09/16/2005

Open source software businesses and projects–like all software companies–have been living with a sword over their heads: the sword of patents. A year ago, the Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) firm reported the existence of 283 patents that the Linux source code may potentially infringe upon. (This is not to say Linux does infringe on all 283.)

While OSRM found that a third of those patents were held by Linux-friendly corporations like Cisco, HP, IBM, Intel, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, and Sony, there were also at least 27 patents held by Microsoft, which has proven its willingness to patent other companies’ work and pursue license fees in the recent squabble over the iPod interface.

…

Open source developers (and well-known companies like IBM and Novell that are involved in open source) have recently become quite worried that some troll or another will find an open source project or company infringing on a patent. It is time–commercial Linux developer Red Hat and Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), an industry consortium, have decided–to take corrective action.

At August’s LinuxWorld ‘05, the organizations announced their own versions of patent commons–safe havens where patents could be dedicated to open source projects. OSDL’s Patent Commons will be a place where companies and individuals can outright donate their patents to the community. Red Hat has agreed to fund the cost of registration for patents that will be donated to its Fedora Foundation. Those patents could then be used in projects using most open source licenses.

All of this is set against the background of a major patent reform bill that will be taken up by Congress this session.

Pito’s Blog

a couple of the last few posts started out as threads I followed from Pito’s blog.  Pito is a good guy doing OPML and targetable aggregators, and writing a nice, wide-ranging, pleasantly optimistic and humble, but informed, blog.  Thanks Pito!

Shortbus

Is a film about sex and sexuality..that has gotten good reviews from wise (and wild) people.