Day: May 23, 2005

The new issue of Release 1.0 deals with Spyware and Adware. Esther Dyson writes:

This issue of Release 1.0 covers spyware – a serious Net-hygiene problem that is replacing spam as the scourge of the year – and its counterpart, adware. The mechanism to address it is similar: an accountable Net of consumer awareness, authentication mechanisms and branding of ads and their sources, and legislation to define the rules even if it is primarily the market that will enforce them. We believe that these mechanisms are beginning to work: The increasing visibility of the problems is accompanied by the increased transparency (and accountability) that will lead to a healthier market and a healthier Net. But this transition is a reminder of just how messy peer-to-peer regulation can be.

There are many similarities between spam and spyware. In each sphere, there’s a range of behavior, from direct mail to spam and phishing, and from adware to spyware and malware – and disagreements on which is which, depending in part on individual preferences. With proper disclosure and technology mechanisms just now coming into play, most individuals will be able to choose what they want. We limn these developments below and then profile four leading players in the space.

Also in each sphere, there’s an important baby in the bathwater. In the case of e-mail and spam, the baby is the e-mail infrastructure that supports one-to-one (and occasionally -to-many) communication and a profusion of powerful capabilities and applications dependent on mail, to say nothing of individuals’ freedom of speech. In the case of adware and spyware, the baby comprises a useful mechanism (advertising) for supporting various kinds of free content and software, along with behavioral profiling that lets a user get content relevant to (and occasionally competing with) what he is looking at and lets advertisers target their ads both to get higher returns and to avoid annoying consumers for whom the ads aren’t relevant. This second group of benefits may not have quite the ring of individuals’ freedom of speech, but at its best it includes the notion of individual empowerment and is a fundamental part of the efficient economy promised by the Net.

Fred Wilson adds: “We need rules, tools, and systems to determine who is doing it right and who is not. Putting software on my machine that I don’t know about, can’t get rid of, that impacts the performance of my computer is bad. That must be stopped and it will be stopped. Amazon watching what I purchase and using that data to make additional purchase recommendations is good and must be allowed to continue. It’s what happens in between those two extremes that is the essence of the debate. ”

[via Smart Mobs] The Edu-Blogger writes:

Its becoming pretty obvious that the major dilemma of our decade is not having access to enough information, but being able to handle all of the information available. More and more were going to need technologies designed to help us find what we want and need instantly (and not without hoping that what we want is in the first 20 results of a possible million). We also need technologies that help us find things we dont know we want, but would be glad to have if we knew about. Here I am not talking about commercial productsalthough businesses have jumped onto this idea more quickly than other servicesI am talking about finding the article I didnt know existed, but which would be just the thing Im looking for, or being alerted to the weather in a town I plan to drive through next week.

The newest innovation I see is a phone that is actually easy to use for anything other than calling people. We have the technology to make phones be computers, complete with all our media, hard drives, anything you want! We can stick 40 gigabytes on something as small as a phone, so the potential is huge to make one device that does everything you needincluding call people (I know we have palm pilots that can call people, but theyre not very popular). Why dont we have this yet? Because phone number pads are the most unusable thing on the planet for anything except calling people. Someones going to get smart and design a really usable phone/mobile device that will become as popular as the iPod is now. Speaking of iPod, why not throw a scroll wheel on a phonethat would be a start!

Alex Bosworth writes about Backpack:

Backpack is basically a list/time management tool. The interesting thing is the zero click interface proposed.

Often you will get an email, or write an email to yourself with an important date to remember or a list of things to do.

If you are sufficiently organized, you might take the trouble to spin up a time/list management tool and enter in the list of items you need to keep track of, or set up your reminders in your datebook app.

But why can’t your email just understand the list of items you want to keep track of, and automatically add them to your list? Why can’t your email (this goes back to my recent post about interop calendars) just automatically mark down on your calendar a time and date referenced in an email?

This is a zero-click interface, and this is what Backpack is trying to get close to. You can just forward your emails with appointments to backpack, and it will automatically set up your datebook with those appointments. The same with todolists, and you can also SMS backpack.