Day: May 11, 2005

Shifting of Time, Place, and Content

Pip Coburn writes:

The abstract is manipulating data, content, storage…. Whether it is your old wedding video plus pictures of your kids, or capturing Seinfeld and then distributing as holiday presents….

Five years from now, the concepts of time shifting, place shifting, and content shifting detailed at Dave Burstein’s Fast Net Futures conference a couple months ago will be a reality. The average human’s total perceived pain of adoption will drop.

Why?

Applications like MP3 players and digital still cameras foster a subset of potential users who are more equipped to consider that TiVo is not the VCR of yesteryear with a different name and wrapper, but a TiVo is, rather, a friend, not a foe. TiVo is not meant to scare Analogists but is meant to enrich lives. It is not really complex. And iPod users… they are less frightened of jumping in to figure out TiVo. iPod is a form of community service, as one helpful experience that makes other storage manipulation tech possibilities less frightening.

Indirectly, a crisis may build to get an iPod in order to fit in with much of society. That peer pressure inadvertently assists the sale of other storage manipulation-related technologies. The price of society membership in some parts of the world today includes being able to use a PC. In five years, in similar societies, there will be peer pressure around being able to manipulate data. Eventually, folks will learn how to manipulate and transmit personal and publicly accessible data, and they will learn about storage and content, in order to qualify as a member of society in many economically developed societies.

The Future of Telephony Looks Like Email

Fred Wilson writes about a presentation made recently by Tom Evslin: “The bottom line to all of this is that the phone network and the email network are the same network going forward. The economics are largely the same. The issues are largely the same. So look at email and all of its issues and opportunities to understand the future of voice.”

Future of News

The Media Center writes in a report on the future of the news: “Its mobile, immediate, visual, interactive, participatory and trusted. Make way for a generation of storytellers who totally get it.”

Thin Client from Ndiyo

BBC News writes:

Not-for-profit developers, Ndiyo – the Swahili word for “yes” – said it could open up the potential of computing to two billion more people.

The sub-100 box, called Nivo, runs on open-source software and is known as a “thin client”. Several can be linked up to a central “brain”, or server.

It said the small, cheap boxes were targeted at smaller companies, cybercafes, or schools, which need an affordable, reliable system for providing clusters of two to 20 workstations.

The Nivo unit itself measures around 12 by eight by two centimetres. It has no moving parts, but it has ports for ethernet, power, keyboard, mouse and a monitor.

It comes with two megabytes of RAM. The next version currently under development will have a USB port, soundcard, local storage capacity, and will be even smaller.

“Essentially, it is about sending pixels over the net,” explained Dr Wills.

We have a similar approach in a company I have co-founded and co-funded – Novatium. One can expect to see an increasing number of sub-$100 thin client solutions in the next couple years.

TECH TALK: The Coming Age of ASPs: Business Model

Wikipedia has more on the ASP model:

The application software typically resides on the vendor’s system. XML and HTML processes on the client’s computers interact with this software.

There are a number of advantages to this approach, including:

  • Software integration issues are eliminated from the client site.
  • Software costs for the application are spread over a number of clients.
  • Vendors can build more application experience than the in-house staff.

    There are some inherent disadvantages, including:

  • The client must generally accept the application as provided since ASPs can only afford a customized solution for the largest clients.
  • The client may rely on the provider to provide a critical business function, thus limiting their ability to handle that function to that of the provider.
  • Continuing consolidation of ASP providers may cause changes in the type or level of service available.

    • HowStuffWorks has more:

    The ASP model has evolved because it offers some significant advantages over traditional approaches. Here are some of the most important advantages:

  • Especially for small businesses and startups, the biggest advantage is low cost of entry and, in most cases, an extremely short setup time.
  • The pay-as-you-go model is often significantly less expensive for all but the most frequent users of the service.
  • The ASP model, as with any outsourcing arrangement, eliminates head count. IT headcount tends to be very expensive and very specialized (like pilots in the airline example), so this is frequently advantageous.
  • The ASP model also eliminates specialized IT infrastructure for the application as well as supporting applications. For example, if the application you want to use requires an Oracle or MS-SQL database, you would have to support both the application and the database.

    One thing that led to the growth of ASPs is the high cost of specialized software. As the costs grow, it becomes nearly impossible for a small business to afford to purchase the software, so the ASP makes using the software possible.

    Another important factor leading to the development of ASPs has been the growing complexity of software and software upgrades. Distributing huge, complex applications to the end user has become extremely expensive from a customer service standpoint, and upgrades make the problem worse. In a large company where there may be thousands of desktops, distributing software (even something as simple as a new release of Microsoft Word) can cost millions of dollars. The ASP model eliminates most of these headaches.

    • On paper, the ASP idea looked like a great win-win for everyone. So, what went wrong?

    Tomorrow: What Went Wrong