Thanks again to Amyloo for her outline and good humor..

Betraying a fondness for OPML geeks 

Jim Moore uses the occasion of the Office 2.0 conference to sing an ode to OPML, mentioning our podcast jam outline.
I think Jim must count himself among the little band of OPML geeks. We
are a clever lot, so resourceful and kind. We love our mothers, keep
our children’s clothing in good repair, and always have an extra minute
to give our cats a cuddle. We dearly love a good joke and tend to be
well-read.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/2007_rss.php

excerpt from…

The Widget Factor

Finally, MySpace really does hold most of the cards in the developing widget war -
because it is the biggest platform by far for widgets, not counting the mass populace of
independent blogs (which only compares to MySpace numbers in aggregate). A lot of widgets
are powered by RSS, or a variant of it. So MySpace is going to be one of the key RSS
platforms in 2007 – and how they manage this platform will be keenly watched.

As the late HBS professor of marketing, Ted Levitt said, “You can differentiate anything!”

Thus a must read from Doc Searls today…click here…

Excerpt:

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Newspapers 2.1 

Visit the Office 2.0 Conference! 

Esther Dyson did the keynote.  She got the conference covered by the mainstream news, which is a good thing. Thanks!

On the other hand, the quotes I have read on CNET and PC World are less than inspiring.  My hunch is that the talk was better than is being reported..

Or maybe the Office 2.0 conference is too focused on Microsoft Office, as seems to be implied by Rafe Needleman’s scathing review of several Office-like online services.  Maybe Esther was gamely trying to stimulate folks to think outside of the Office-clone-box…

My business partner and Moonwatcher Charlie Wood says it well.  The disruptive potential of 2.0 is not in supplanting Microsoft Office, and it is not, sorry Ray O., in collaboration.  The disruptive potential of Web 2.0 in the enterprise is the re-wiring of data.  It’s potential is in connecting business processes and applications in new ways…

By the way, the disruptive potential of Consumer 2.0 is not the supplanting of personal productivety applications, either.  Blogging, Myspace, YouTub rewire social relationships.  For example, Really Simple Syndication started out as a “peoples’ version” of an ATEX newspaper publishing combined with a community-run alternative to King Features Syndicate and the Associated Press–hence the word “syndication” and the concept of the “newsreader” or personal newspaper, supplied with syndicated newsfeeds from the community.  Very much like most print newspapers even today. Dave Winer as DIY writer, syndicator, publisher and “people’s publishing industry” visionary and technologist.

The real potential for 2.0 in the enterprise is in carrying forward the unfinished XML revolution.  XML 1.0 connected and synchronized databases.  It began to break down the silos of information inside companies. It began to break the logjam of database integration projects in companies, by making true integration unnecessary in most cases.  It freed IT folks to do better things with their time…like transform business processes.

Now XML 2.0 will let business processes talk to each other.  Most of the time, the “talking” will be machine to machine.  ERP applications, CRM applications, etc. etc. etc. can now interconnect, seamlessly and automagically.

XML 2.0 is kind of  a dull way to say it. 

Enterprise 2.0 had some promise as a name but was messed up by the silly pouting and censorship by Wikipedia, and by the community’s even more silly deference to Wikipedia as an IT industry arbiter of terms….

Office 2.0 was good enough to bring together a lot of interesting folks on short notice…now I hope it gets defined in an expansive, big-tent way..

Big tent 2.0 may yet have something for Esther to get excited about…

One irony–in the Office 2.0 audience there are OPML geeks rapidly turning the entire conference into a media application, with content..OPML folks are sort of bloggers 2.0…

OPML continues to be the unsung but “famous within a small group of people” way to share knowledge in outlines.  Thanks to Dave Winer (who continues to put out new disruptive stuff, while simultaneously using it to personally hack the media as a 2.0 talkshowhost and media star…. Gotta love im…).

OPML.  Get a taste of the quiet revolution with the ugly name…

(or as Tom Morris suggests, “OPIUM L”..the quiet revolution.  Very quiet.)

Want a taste of O?  Browse through Amyloo’s Office2.0podcasts outline.   This tree browser includes an integrated–if a bit minimalist–one-click RSS reader/aggregator…

Created in OPML and available now in the community space at OPMLWorkstation.  Fresh out of the oven!

An outline can be written once and published in many forms..

There is also an Optimal by Dan McTough version of Amyloo’s outline here.

And there is a Grazr three-pane version of Amyloo’s outline available here.

Finally, if you want to make your own Grazr application from her outline, and post it on your blog, you can do put Amyloo’s file into the Grazr configurator here.

From Nuodai. A fifteen-year-old user of YouTube has an important observation on Google buying YouTube.  His point, communicated in a YouTube video, of course, is that Google might do bettter for the total worldwide community of Internet users by investing a billion dollars in making its own site better for users, rather than buying up its competitor.

That is a very important point, and provides an important corrective to my previous post. I celebrate the aquisition as a triumph for the creative community.  Google forced to buy YouTube. 

But the user referenced above is correct to note that what happens when a site is purchased by a big player is that the big player is no longer forced to compete with the small one, and the small one may no longer be forced to work as hard to be successful.  Example, Blogger after the Google acquisition.

Chad and Steve in their video announcing the aquisition say that it will allow them to focus on creating a better user experience.  Right.  If they are not especially diligent, the aquisition will allow them to focus on tuning their Ferraris and dealing with Google management politics.

It’s not the economy that matters.  It’s the ecology.

Founders Chad and Steve announce the Google acquisition of YouTube. On YouTube, natch.

As they say in the video, “The king of search and the king of video have gotten together.”

YouTube is the king of video because of gardening, forestry.  YouTube is the current best model of ecological planting, feeding, weeding, nurturance and stimulation  of creative community ecosystems.

YouTube fosters a vibrant center of community creativity.  YouTube hosts a prolific ecosystem with many many species, with more coming everyday, co-evolving with each other, and sending out fresh blooms every day.

What matters is the creative mix.  The hotbed.

NOT the land.

NOT even the soil.

Google launched Google Video–land and soil.  Google video is a barren stretch of land.  Google Video is a good service, but few planted seeds in it. 

So now Google has, wisely I believe, purchased YouTube. What did Google purchase?  Momentum.  Community.  Quality community content.  A successful creative community ecosystem.

It is the ecology, smarty!

The intangible asset that makes a difference is an ecosystem with community creativity at the core, with widespread public recognition and public creativity about the daily creations of the community, and with easy ways to check out the current content and send it to one’s friends.

These characteristics are then crossed with market size and service growth rate, and from the result you can estimate value to the new world, and thus to potential investors.

YouTube, Myspace and FaceBook have community creativity, widespread recognition, and easy ways to visit and forward content. 

YouTube has a very fast growth rate and almost unlimited market size.  Myspace has a massive established size and appears to be continuing to grow its addressable market, in part because it is becoming a highly varied, highly flexible multimedia platform for its users, integrating text, audio and video.  FaceBook has a fast growth rate but is nearing saturation in its core market.

One of the core challenges of such services is how to lower the barriers to individual creative participation.  YouTube only requires uploading a video file from your digital camera or cell phone.  See for example my video of Tom Morris at Thoreau’s cabin..

Along this line, one wonders about Second Life.  Second Life has a lot of reputation buzz going for it, and continual cheerleading from Wired and other print media.  But the barrier to participation is high..Second Life has a few really accomplished creators, such as Drew of Infinitysquared.  I find myself wondering if guys like Drew are as rare as conventional architects like Frank Geary.  I am not sure this bodes well for Second Life’s vibrancy as a participatory community…

Brad Feld sent me a note describing in convincing detail several hair-raising stories of small companies–bad actors–coming to his small companies and using dumb patents to extort million dollar payments.

He argues that some of the worst actors in the ecosystem are small guys
who bully (my word) others using bogus patents that apply to art that
is widely available.

Brad’s case examples demonstrate that such
activities are not “a gnat”–as I had claimed–but can amount to catastrophic
extortion for a small company.

I agree.  My mistake.  As I said to Brad, this issue is now on my radar screen.  Thanks for the dialogue!

I would like to collect other stories of this nature, from those of you out there.

I am willing to assume that Brad’s companies were not infringing in any moral sense of the word. 
They were simply building upon public art that is essential to the
layering of the IT ecosystem.  There should be a clear zone of art that is widely recognized as free
to use.  One way to do this is to make official datasets of prior art.  Patents issued that overlap with prior art are “bad quality” patents. 

Extortion, by the way, is a bad in its own right.

If a patent is smart, is extortion any less painful?

Those who have valid property rights need to be fair about licensing.

I think that part of the solution here is a better way of handling licensing.  I don’t what  might work, but extortion is a “market failure” that needs to be addressed in its own right.

Quality patents plus fair and open licensing…steps to making a property market that works for all..

A video window into our life at home..

I really really do think that video is the new central app of the web..See the nice little videos, that took almost nothing to produce, and that enjoyably captures two thoughtful people who otherwise would probably not have documented this conversation.

Hats off to IBM Marketing

IBM is perhaps the most sophisticated marketing company in the computer ecosystem.

Being able to sway public and market opinion has always been an IBM
strength. 

Hats off to IBM’s patent licensing business

IBM is also the world’s largest holder of issued US patents.

IBM is the largest patent troll–that is, patent licensing company-on the planet.

So forgive me for being cynical about IBM’s initiatives in “patent reform” when they seek to raise the bar for new patents being issued by the patent office by calling into question the “quality” of the patent office process and the “quality” of issued patents. 

Brad Feld just sent me a link to the following document funded by IBM on the question of patent quality.

This document reflects exactly the sort
of promotional activity that IBM has long done for its strategic
initiatives. 

Pardon me for becoming immediately suspicious when something is so polished.  It means someone spent a lot of money on presentation.  Hmmm. (see my admittedly snarky review of IBM’s “open” marketing campaign in note # 1 below).

But getting beyond slickness, consider the substance:

At first reading, it is hard to fault this IBM intellectual property initiative.  Apple pie and motherhood.

The IBM initiative references the need to create new institutions to help make the market for intellectual property more effective. This is something I am committed to. 

The IBM initiative also acknowledges that intellectual property IS property–something I think is fundamental to promoting innnovation and supporting inventors.

IBM argues for patent quality–something I believe is important. Both Brad and I agree patents should be granted for true innovations–important problems solved in novel ways.

IBM’s red herring, “patent quality”

The problem with IBM’s initiative is that while it pretends to be systematic, balanced and comprehensive, it is not.

Instead, IBM focuses attention on only one small aspect of the patent and intellectual property marketplace challenge.

IBM positions patent quality as the major problem with the patent system–and then proposes a “solution” that transparently favors IBM.

IBM’s careful framing of the “patent quality problem” is a deliberate red herring. 

Patent quality as an output of the patent office is good.  Patent quality as an output of the entire patent value chain is excellent.  Licensed patents, those that matter, are an output of the entire end-to-end patent process–from
submissions, to patent office actions including challenges, to routine
licensing as an element of, say, chips or hardware or services–which
is most of the market, to notification of potential infringers, to
negotiation among parties disputing particular property rights, to
settlements, and to the rare but vital-to-the-total process referrals
to courts of law.

“Patent quality” as IBM defines it is NOT a problem.  While one can
always find examples of dumb patents–out of thousands granted–I have
never in my business experience been stopped or slowed by a stupid
patent.  Never.  Irritated, inconvenienced, but never stopped.  Dumb
patents, as an issue, is a gnat.

We must not allow ourselves to be steamrolled by IBM into making
radical changes in the patent system to address a non-issue. Dumb
patents are irritating, but are not worth profoundly changing the
patent system to protect against.  People argue that Sarbanes is a radical solution that is too expensive for the problem it solves: Enron.  Well, at least Enron-like accounting scandals are a real, recognized problem that has cost investors billions of dollars of lost capital.  Can you say that about “patent quality?” No. “Patent quality” is a made up issue, promoted by IBM and other big companies, supported by a small number of academics who are on the pay (employees or grantees) of the large companies.

The real problem is invention theft

Invention theft:  A real, pressing, day-to-day challenge

While I have never been more than inconvenienced by stupid patents, I have had extensive experience with invention theft.  As recently as two months ago a young entrepreneur took an invention to a company I am invested in, negotiated to sell or license the invention.  After many meetings the CEO told this person that the company had decided it could just copy the invention.  At the next meeting the CEO said that he had just discovered that his company had, unbeknownst to him, “been working on just the same invention for several months before” negotiations had begun with the young entrepreneur.  This seemed rather incredible, but what was the young man to do?

Theft of legitimate inventions, original innovations, is a day-to-day occurrence in the technology ecosystem.  This is the elephant on the table in discussions of patents.  What is needed by true innovators, by creative people, is better protection, not weaker protection.

Honestly, I am angry about this situation.  I am saddened by the stories of young people and young companies whose inventions are stolen by those with the money and the market power to capitalize on these inventions.

IBM seeks to distract us from the much bigger and more immediate problem of theft of intellectual
property by large companies like IBM and Microsoft.  IBM wants us to look away from the terribly
high cost of patent enforcement against infringers such as the
self-same IBM and Microsoft.

Why is IBM so keen to do this?  Because IBM’s traditional business model cannot survive in the Web 2.0 ecosystem as that ecosystem is evolving

IBM’s business is toast unless it can freely source inventions from Web 2.0 entrepreneurs

What terrifies IBM is that it no longer is a primary source of world innovation.  It must beg, borrow, buy or steal inventions in order to continue in business.

The community of Web 2.0 developers is the major source of innovation in the ecosystem. One can argue that this or that Web 2.0 innovation is not of high enough quality to warrent a patent, but one cannot argue with the collective innovation of the Web 2.0 community.  There is no argument that the worldwide Web 2.0 movement, the Web 2.0 swarm, is vastly out-innovating IBM and similar large companies.  And as millions and millions of new inventors come online, in India, China, Africa, the Americas, Russia, the swarm is expanding.

The swarm will kill IBM if it cannot get ready and continuous access to the inventions born of the swarm.

The problem for the Web 2.0 innovators and companies is how to be fairly paid for their innovations.  Other than being acquired for relative pennies by Google, or Microsoft, or Yahoo, or Murdock, or IBM, Web 2.0 companies have found few ways to make money beyond serving Adsense ads.

During the next few years the biggest issue facing the Web 2.0 community will be how to retain its rightful ownership over its valid, high-quality inventions.  The biggest issue facing the Web 2.0 community, and the individuals with the community, will be how to keep their innovations from being freely appropriated–stolen–by large companies like IBM.

The sad news for IBM, and the good news for the community, is that there are a number of law firms and private equity firms that will now help entrepreneurs secure their property rights and enforce them against infringers.  The Web 2.0 ecosystem is becoming sophisticated about property rights.  IBM calls these law firms and investors “trolls” because they represent people like you and me against the likes of IBM. IBM does not like such firms.

The biggest strategic issue facing IBM

The biggest strategic issue facing IBM is how not to overpay for the community-created inventions upon which it is now dependent.

Now do you understand why IBM is spending millions to promote its own version of the open source movement?  To give it preferencial access to community inventions.  “Free software” AS IN “free beer,” for IBM.

Once Web 2.0 inventors wake up to the value of what they are inventing, and once Web 2.0 inventors realize how relatively easy it is to file patents and protect their property, look out IBM.  IBM, now mainly an integrator of other people’s technology, knows and fears this.

The slick look of the IBM anti-patent initiative is directly proportional to the fear you can see in IBM’s eyes.  The funding by IBM of EFF and other so-called “patent reformers” is a direct reflection of the threat of Web 2.0 to the IBM core business.

IBM is campaigning as aggressively as it knows how.  Its survival is at stake.  IBM is determined to raise the bar for new patents, and especially for patents filed by small companies and independent inventors.

IBM fears the Web 2.0 ecosystem.  IBM fears the Web 2.0 developers.

What IBM fears most is that the Web 2.0 developers will soon wake up and claim their rights to the fruits of their hard work. What IBM fears most is that it will no longer be able to create a business based on being a fast-follower, technology-marketer and systems integrator of other people’s inventions.

So let us rise to the call!  Let us band together and claim the fruits of our labors!

————————————————————————–
Note #1:

Hats off to the best public relations money can buy

The IBM document is slick, with terrific graphics and a cool orange
color–the “RSS Orange” to be exact.  IBM gave it a terrific title,
“Building a New IP Markeplace.”  Hard to argue with that. 

The document is credited in the page notes not to IBM, but to a project called “A Global Innovation
Outlook, 2.0 Report.”  The GIO is an IBM-funded, IBM-led lookalike to the World Economic Forum.  Not that IBM would copy another’s invention, but the similarity is striking.

>
• >The future of the enterprise
• >Energy and the environment
• >Transportation and mobility

>

Can you believe it!  Fifteen, count ‘em, “deep dive” sessions!

The booklet opens with a full-page quote in bold, by Jean-Babtiste Sourfron, of the Wikemedia Foundation.

Street cred.  Check.

The IBM document references a fifty-person,
IBM-funded advisory committee. Log rolling?

The mouse print under the list of participants reads: 

Good to know. 8 of them are from IBM itself, by the way.