broadstuff

Reading Stowe Boyd's blog, I saw this GigaOm post about Twitter's Ev Williams talk:

Williams, on stage at a Girls in Tech event at Kicklabs, compared Twitter to email, where information overload can be incapacitating. “The problem with email is that it’s sender-driven, and sender-driven media doesn’t scale,” he said. On the one hand, the recipient hates email for being spammy because “the sender is motivated to send as much stuff as possible because it’s free.” On the other hand, the sender may be dissatisfied because she’s not reaching the right audience for whom she may not even have email addresses.

Blogging (Williams was previously the founder of Blogger) and Tweeting can be different (and better) than email, he said, because people who have something to say can find their audience. That’s a much better situation for both the publisher of the information and the consumer of it. So recipient-based media can scale better “in a world of infinite information,” he said.

That’s also a contrast to Google, said Williams, which serves more purpose-driven needs versus Twitter’s focus on “an interest-based world.”

Stowe's view is that:

I like the recipient- v sender-driven distinction, but I think the reason that stream apps seem to help us cope with a crazy busy world (‘overload’) is that they tap into the flow state in our heads allowing us to multithread, while inboxes are purely linear.

My view is more quantitative - aka volume driven - when you have to rely on Twitter for the heavy lifting email does today, it too will move from interesting but throwaway stuff to royal pain in the arse, mainly because it will shift from recreational to workload adding - and in fact if you look at Twitter clients they are becoming increasingly like email clients in functionality, as my colleague Dave Short predicted they would end up looking like several years ago.

Also, for twitter to really reduce my Information Overload it needs far better filtering (which Mr Williams admitted in the talk).

Good article in The Economist that looks at the wide range of datamining activity on Social Nets - firstly, it breaks marvellously benign new ground:

..broadening data mining to include analysis of social networks makes new things possible. Modelling social relationships is akin to creating an “index of power”, says Stephen Borgatti, a network-analysis expert at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. In some companies, e-mails are analysed automatically to help bosses manage their workers. Employees who are often asked for advice may be good candidates for promotion, for example.

Crime can be reduced....

Ellen Joyner of SAS, an analytics firm based in Cary, North Carolina, notes that more and more financial firms are using the software to uncover fraud. The latest version of SAS’s software identifies risky borrowers by examining their social networks and Internal Revenue Service records, she says. For example, an applicant may be a bad risk, or even a fraudster, if he plans to launch a type of business which has no links to his social network, education, previous business dealings or travel history, which can be pieced together with credit-card records. Ms Joyner says the software can also determine if an applicant has associated with known criminals—perhaps his fiancée has shared an address with a parolee. Some insurers reduce premiums for banks that protect themselves with such software.

The police department of Richmond, Virginia, has pioneered the use of network-analysis software to predict crimes. Police officers know that crime increases at certain times, such as on paydays and when there is a full moon. But the software lets them analyse the social networks around suspects, such as dealings with employers, collection agencies and the Department of Motor Vehicles. The goal, according to Stephen Hollifield, the department’s technology chief, is to “pull together a complete picture” of suspects and their social circle.

Party plans turn out to be a particularly useful part of this picture. Richmond’s police have started monitoring Facebook, MySpace and Twitter messages to determine where the rowdiest festivities will be. On big party nights, the department now saves about $15,000 on overtime pay, because officers are deployed to areas that the software deems ripe for criminal activity. Crime has “dramatically” declined as a result, says Mr Hollifield. Colin Shearer, vice-president of predictive analytics at SPSS, a division of IBM that makes the software in question, says it can largely replace police officers’ reliance on “gut feel”.

Secondly, it finds the real influencers, good and bad:

TELECOMS operators naturally prize mobile-phone subscribers who spend a lot, but some thriftier customers, it turns out, are actually more valuable. Known as “influencers”, these subscribers frequently persuade their friends, family and colleagues to follow them when they switch to a rival operator. The trick, then, is to identify such trendsetting subscribers and keep them on board with special discounts and promotions. People at the top of the office or social pecking order often receive quick callbacks, do not worry about calling other people late at night and tend to get more calls at times when social events are most often organised, such as Friday afternoons. Influential customers also reveal their clout by making long calls, while the calls they receive are generally short.

................

Network analysis also has a useful role to play in counterterrorism. Terror groups are often decentralised, so mapping their social networks is akin to deciphering “a big spaghetti picture”, says Roy Lindelauf of the Royal Dutch Defence Academy, who develops software for intelligence agencies in the Netherlands. It turns out that the key terrorists in a group are often not the leaders, but rather seemingly low-level people, such as drivers and guides, who keep addresses and phone numbers memorised. Such people tend to stand out in network models because of their high level of connectedness. To find them, analysts map “structural signatures” such as short phone calls placed to the same number just before and after an attack, which may indicate that the beginning and end of an operation has been reported.

Marvellous, I hear you say - what can go wrong? Well, nothing except the amount of data about you that they want, and all the other things they can predict with it - like your infidelities for example (believe me, you can...). But it is not going to go away:

The market for such software is booming. By one estimate there are more than 100 programs for network analysis, also known as link analysis or predictive analysis. The raw data used may extend far beyond phone records to encompass information available from private and governmental entities, and internet sources such as Facebook. IBM, the supplier of the system used by Bharti Airtel, says its annual sales of such software, now growing at double-digit rates, will exceed $15 billion by 2015. In the past five years IBM has spent more than $11 billion buying makers of network-analysis software. Gartner, a market-research firm, ranks the technology at number two in its list of strategic business operations meriting significant investment this year.

And its getting easier - 5 years ago I needed all I'd learned in an MSc in Engineering doing what what was effectively Stats and Operations Research, but now:

A decade ago IBM employed experts with PhDs in mathematics to study social networks, according to Mark Ramsey, the firm’s head of business analytics for eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Today, college graduates can operate analysis software handling enormous quantities of data. Bharti Airtel employs only about 100 analysts to keep tabs on its 135m subscribers.

I was at an early futurology session on this about 10 years ago, the endgame was succinctly described as being able to predict the "Net Present Value of your Future Spend".

You have been warned........

Had to install iTunes to set up an iPhone for a friend the other day, finished it all nearly 100Mb of bloatware and 1 hour later. WTF sez I, what could possibly justify such a huge program just for that? Well, I stumbled upon this Xconomy post about the Why:

If you’re not convinced about iTunes’ cruftiness, let me take you on a tour of the program’s main functions. This is a long list, but bear with me:

• It lets you rip CDs to digital formats and play the new files

• It lets you burn new CDs from your digital files

• It lets you print jewel-case inserts for your newly burned CDs

• It gives you several ways of visualizing your media collection, including Cover Flow

• It lets you curate your music collection with ratings and the like

• It lets you create playlists from subsets of your music collection

• Its “Genius” feature can automatically create new playlists based on your listening habits

• It includes a music equalizer and other sound processing features

• It stores copies of your purchased albums, TV shows, and movies

• It stores copies of your downloaded podcasts and iTunes U videos

• It stores copies of the iBooks editions, PDFs, and audiobooks that you may be consuming on your iPhone or iPad

• It stores copies of all of your iPhone and iPad apps

• The Genius function can suggest apps you might like based on your past downloads

• It stores copies of your iPhone ringtones (but it doesn’t let you make your own ringtones anymore)

• It connects to hundreds of streaming Internet radio stations

• It is the leading podcasting client, automatically downloading new audio and video podcasts to which you have subscribed

• It is the gateway to the iTunes Store, which is really seven separate stores for music, movies, TV shows, apps, podcasts, audio books, and university lectures

• It’s the only way to access the new Ping social network

• It’s the hub for sharing music across your home wireless network

• If you have a new iPhone or iPad, you have to use iTunes to activate cellular or data plans

• It synchronizes the music, movies, or TV shows that you buy on your computer to your iPod, iPhone, or iPad, and vice versa

• It can transcode video in certain PC formats such as QuickTime into formats that are playable on iPods, iPhones, iPads, and Apple TV

• It synchronizes your iCal calendar with the calendars on your iPod, iPhone, or iPad; it also synchronizes your address books and any content in your Notes app

• It is the conduit for installing the MobileMe control panel, if you want to synchronize data automatically across your PC and your Apple devices

• It stores voice memos recorded using the iPhone’s built-in voice memo app

• It’s the repository for music and video files embedded in documents created using Apple’s iWork and iLife productivity applications

• It interacts with the Remote app, which lets you control your media collection from an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad

Any program that can print jewel case inserts and share my music preferences with my friends is starting to sound a lot like that giant clot of bubble gum.

As Tim O'Reilly notes, iTunes bloatware may be the undoing of the Apple bid for Global Domination. And it starts insidiously - I wish I'd read Jas Dhaliwal's post on how to avoid megabloatage first:

Many people do not want to install the other applications. However, Apple does not allow the option to install individual components. The good news, is that it very easy just to install the individual components that you want.

Firstly, you need to install Winrar. This application will allow you to ‘unpack’ your downloaded iTunesSetup.exe file. Locate your file, and right click on it. You will be presented with a number of menu options, select ‘Extract Here’.

(Jas's post has pictures n' all, so go there if you want to unbloat your iTunes)

Winrar will now extract the iTunes installation package and will reveal the individual MSI setup files. You can now double click on the iTunes.msi file to install iTunes without the other applications.

Please excuse me now - me and iTunes are going to have a little tete a tete about slimming......

Two totally different views of the Future Of The Internet crossed my desk within hours today.

Firstly, Tom Coates at dConstruct banging the Romantic Future drum (as noted by One Man and His Blog):

[Tom] was drawing a parallel between the work of King Darius in the year A Long Time Ago BC, who built a new transport network across Persia, and transformed the country as a result. (Prior to that, princes of Persia had to jump across roofs to get around). 

Today, we're in a similar situation, as we evolve the web from a place where each site was complete unto itself, into a place where the interaction of sites, through the exchange of data creates a new network that will reshape the world. Lanyrd.com is an example of something that was built quickly and easily from data from other sites. (But it isn't the semantic web that'd driving that. The top-down approach has been superseded by a more organic approach to building links - which is orthogonal to the efforts of the key semantic advocates.)

Aside: he built a slide with 150 transitions in 30 seconds. I am in awe....

That network is beginning to extend beyond the world of sites, into network-enables devices. He gave a range of examples from the Boris Bike to parking in San Francisco, but I'm going to focus on the Internet-connected scales. You could scan Twitter for the tweets from the scales, and do trends and maps... OK, back to the parking then - by tracking use and networking the data with traffic information, they can vary parking prices to ensure that there's always one parking space per block, and thus make traffic flow more efficient... Interconnected data opens up the possibility of positive changes to a physical living environment.

And that's what brings us back to Darius. We're building the inromation network that the next generation will build on to change the world.

And in the Pessimism Corner, the Economist noting that the roses in the garden are starting to smell a bit off:

Three sets of walls are being built.

The first is national. China’s “great firewall” already imposes tight controls on internet links with the rest of the world, monitoring traffic and making many sites or services unavailable. Other countries, including Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, have done similar things, and other governments are tightening controls on what people can see and do on the internet.

Second, companies are exerting greater control by building “walled gardens”—an approach that appeared to have died out a decade ago. Facebook has its own closed, internal e-mail system, for example. Google has built a suite of integrated web-based services. Users of Apple’s mobile devices access many internet services through small downloadable software applications, or apps, rather than a web browser. By dictating which apps are allowed on its devices, Apple has become a gatekeeper. As apps spread to other mobile devices, and even cars and televisions, other firms will do so too.

Third, there are concerns that network operators looking for new sources of revenue will strike deals with content providers that will favour those websites prepared to pay up.

The Economist notes that:

[many of] the incentives that used to favour greater interconnection now point the other way. Suggesting that “The Web is Dead”, as Wired magazine did recently [broadstuff take on that is over here], is going a bit far. But the net is losing some of its openness and universality.

That’s not always a bad thing. The profits which Apple harvests from its walled garden have enabled it to provide services and devices that delight its customers, who may be happy to trade a little openness for greater security or ease of use.

Now, the Economist is obviously for the Free Trading ideal, but is noting that it is no done deal and that instead a Balkanisation is breaking out, simply because it is easier to make capital gain (financial, social or political) by walling off rather than interconnecting.

So - who is correct - the Coatesian Romantic or the Rational Economic Pessimist?

Well, of course they both are - to an extent. Coates is telling us what is possible if you follow the technology, the Economist is pointing out what is probable if you follow the money.

I would like to believe the former, but incline to the view that the latter is increasingly more likely as, to borrow a point by Edmund Burke, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" - or in the case of this industry, that so many people use the walled garden services with such joyful abandon is actually worse than "doing nothing".

We can only hope, as does the Economist - ironically for a Free Trade rag - that outside entities (Good Guy Governments and Corporates that Do No Evil) can come in and lead by example or even stir things up a bit. After all, it has always worked before.....

Apple has released a new social network around music, called Ping! This post is not to bury it, nor even to praise it, but to understand why they have launched Yet Another Social Network, especially into the crowded space of Music and the resounding cries of "where is Last.fm now" et al....

Giga Om says that Ping! is The Future of Social Commerce:

My belief has only been affirmed by growth in the amount of data available. With 12 million songs and 250,000 apps, the best way for Apple to enhance the iTunes store – aka its shopping experience — is through the use of social. Back in 2007, I argued that social networking was merely a feature that had to be embedded into applications to enhance their value. Apple has done a great job of that, but it’s also gone one step further, not only by adding a social networking layer to iTunes, but by meshing it with its commerce engine, the iTunes Store. And it’s made this experience available on both the desktop and its devices.

Apple received much of this social capability with the acquisition of Lala, an online music service, which as a standalone company used sharing of social objects to drive folks towards paid music downloads. Now Apple is only closing the loop by further sharing what users bought. I wouldn’t be least bit surprised if sales of music on the iTunes store rocket upwards, thanks to social discovery.

Our review of Lala strategy is over here by the way

From MySpace onwards "Social" music has failed to deliver the goods, for a whole host of reasons but primarily its not a big enough "Social Object" to capture enough attention for a full grown sustainable Social Net. Music is a subset of why and how we interact with people, not a reason (in fact, based on some of my friends' musical tastes its probably a reason to drop people....).

Now, GigaOm is sounding Ping's praises from the rafters, but whether they were paid to do it or not, I ain't buying it as the Future of Social Commerce. My hypothesis is that "Social" and "Commerce" are uneasy bedfellows at best.

But Apple are no fools, they will know all this. In fact, I would hypothesize that Apple does not need this to be a sustainable social network. All it needs is for a sufficiently large crew of volunteers to add sufficient folksonomic aggregation data around iTunes to ramp up its purchasing attractiveness some more.

No, the real play here is harnessing this to the iTunes store - this is all about selling more songs, not about being sociable. It's about getting a Folksonomy going - Folks do the heavy lifting (recommendations etc), Apple gets the economic benefit (aka the loot in extre spending). I await with eager anticipation the use of kickbacks to "influential" super-users.

Think Social Recommendation Engine, not Social Network.

And of course, getting some more behavioural data about YOU never hurts in the Social Network game...

There has been quite a bitter fight going on for the last 8 years or so (ever since Broadband reared its head) for the ownership of the Device That Lets (Comms and) Entertainment Into Your Home. Various Set Top Boxes (cable, satellite) held sway but over the 'noughties have had to duke it out with increasingly powerful multifunctional routers, IPTV boxes, 'net connected games machines, New New STB's like Boxee and of course MyPCTV (my PC controlling the TV set) which has held sway in Chez Broadstuff for some 4 years now, especially since BBC's iPlayer came into use.

Next up is the new Apple TV - or more accurately, the Apple Set Top Box That Controls the TV. It is definitely smaller and more stylish the Old Set Top Boxes (no doubt there will now be a rush to be thin, small and black among other STB makers).

But, while the chatterati all ooooh their way to their Applegasms, it is time for us more sanguine types to look at the overall value chain and ask "what has changed". The old Apple TV was a download and play (iTunes) model, the new one has streaming deals with TV stations and no memory at all. There is no new technology at play here, nothing in the value chain that doesn't exist already, no new "gee whiz" device - what is interesting is that Apple has done a complete shift of value chain model, from download to stream (because that is what most people like).

The really fascinating bit of this picture however, is if you go up one step in the system diagram. Apple now has a plethora of screens and devices that all interact with each other and with an end to end delivery value chain, from content via aggregation to user device. They don't own the distribution piece, but they have made deals with Moble Telcos that no one believed possible beforehand. I await similar with TV Co's (they have already pushed streaming prices down from $2.99 to $0.99). Appls pricing is now coming in at $99, a lot cheaper than most other STB's that don't come attached to large bundles of bloatvid.

And that is where it gets interesting. The big prize has always been to control the Home Multi-media Controller, and this Apple TV device - plus the apparent ubiquitous rollout of a new IOS4 operating system across all their devices - is another move in the Apple play to surround and then own that piece of turf.

By the way, I am no Aple fanboi, but I have been using the Apple Value Chain diagram in consulting to clients since iTunes came out, and what amazes me is that no other big player has replicated it as they have stormed moble music, mobile telephony/smartphones, the mobile web, tablest and starting now, Quad Play in the home.

Incidentally, I believe this is a more robust strategy than Google TV, as SAI notes:

Specifically, Google wants to turn your TV into a computer. Apple says people specifically don't want computers on their TV. Who will win?

Apple made it clear today that it's trying to complement the gadgets that are already in your living room and hooked up to your TV. Apple TV is an add-on -- it's basically there to provide a few extra streaming features, in addition to your cable box and videogame console.

This is not even a question by 2010, so I think Google strikes out at first base - we set up usage experiments with the MyPCTV concept in 2006/7, its clear that the TV is not a computer, but is part of a complex "4 screen" (TV, PC, Tablet, Mobile) end user world.

But more than that, the real thing Apple has going for it is that end to end value delivery system which Google hasn't replicated - not in Mobile (albeit they are putting a lot of effort in belatedly with Android), and not in Video.

Oh, and they own the end device - s. Never forget that...............

This does not of course mean they will win - but what they are positionng themselves to do is cream off a lot of early adopters, take massive market share early on with high margins products, make it expensive to roll them back.

The New York Times on Location based services:

Venture capitalists have poured $115 million into location start-ups since last year, according to the National Venture Capital Association, and companies like Starbucks and Gap have offered special deals to users of such services who visited their stores.

But for all the attention and money these apps and Web sites are getting, adoption has so far been largely confined to pockets of young, technically adept urbanites. Just 4 percent of Americans have tried location-based services, and 1 percent use them weekly, according to Forrester Research. Eighty percent of those who have tried them are men, and 70 percent are between 19 and 35.

The Fist Generation services (Loopt, Dopplr etc) have by and lerge failed to gain traction. So far what has worked with 2nd generation location based services is game based rewards (eg becoming mayor of a place) but these rewards are ultimately about bribery (eg becoming mayor gets you a free offer). Shopkick plays for the endgame by giving you money off coupons when you shop at a certain shop - it's the online equivalent of newspaper coupon clipouts.

But never fear, the CEO of Loopt claims that people born after 1981 (ie below 30) have lower privacy requirements, and thus a larger demographic will emerge year by year:

“The magic age is people born after 1981," said Sam Altman in a New York Times article. “That’s the cut-off for us where we see a big change in privacy settings and user acceptance.”

So, two contradictory views - the NYT arging that the market is limited, the CEO of Loopt arguing that the only way is up. I have another explanation for the people after 1981 being less privacy aware, and this is simply that they are young and have less to lose - as the NYT notes:

Stephanie Angelucci, who is 30 and lives in North Beach, Md., updates her MySpace page with photos of her babies, news about her health and testaments to her love of sailing. But she won’t use location apps.

“I don’t like broadcasting where we are or when my husband’s gone, just for safety reasons,” she said. And privacy concerns aside, she doesn’t see the need: “We go to playtime, the park and the grocery store. My life isn’t exciting enough to broadcast where I am and what I do.”

In other words, perhaps at (about) 30 people start to have responsibilities, and for various reasons become far less interested in displaying their location.

Interesting hypothesis from Elias Bizannes about an emerging seed Investment bubble - he did the maths on Y Combinator:

Y Combinator for example has funded 206 companies to date. At an average $10k in capital as well as $600 in travel costs (applicant companies can get up to $600 in reimbursement costs), they've put at least $2m in seed capital and assuming 10-20% of companies get accepted (an assumption by us), then reimbursed travel costs are between $450-900k. (Note: this is extremely conservative to the point of unrealistic, as companies receives $10k per person so the cost is actually closer to double or $4m in seed investment -- but we're doing this to prove a point.)

And what's the return? According to Christiansen, of the 206 companies invested in Y Combinator there has been $89,008,000 in exist value generated. Y Combinator claims the average stake in each company is 6-7%, so the group made $5,340,480 on a 6% return. But we think the companies that actually exited would have been able to negotiate a lower rate, as well as the fact Y Combinator would have got diluted by some of the companies that took additional funding. If we use 4%, then the return is $3,560, 320.

After five years, that's a gross profit of between anywhere between 500k (assuming 900k travel costs, and 4% return) to $3m (assuming 450k travel costs and 6% return). That means on a conservative back-of-envelope guess, the operational side of Y-Combinator gets about $600k a year, which is what a fund manager would make.

I am looking at this article for 2 reasons, viz:

- I haven't done the maths he has, but judging by the number of articles (and people I have met recently) that are popping up around the "seed investor" ecosystem it makes me think of "Incubators 2.0" (remember them, they bombed in the Dotcom boom), and it just smells like there is a bubble coming.

- Elias links to a most amazing spreadsheet by Jed Christiansen, logging the progress of all thebetter known seed funds, that will be fascinating to keep track of.

Also, there is considerable turmoil in VC-land as its economics change, and one can see that one strategy a lot of newer companies are using is to charge into the "funding gap" where Angels (and VCs) have traditionally feared to tread. And, as Fred Wilson recently pointed out, the issue is not te $Xm investment that is key for the funder, its the 2-3 times $Xm follow up investment that really allows them to take value - if the Seed Funds have kept it, that is.

The WSJ had a go at the dearth of women in Tech (by which I think they mean ICT, as in my experience there are loads of women chemists and biologists) and asked why:

Only about 11% of U.S. firms with venture-capital backing in 2009 had current or former female CEOs or female founders, according to data from Dow Jones VentureSource. The prestigious start-up incubator Y Combinator has had just 14 female founders among the 208 firms it has funded.

The “where-are-all-the-women” meme is a familiar one, and not confined to the technology world. But in start-up land, where the good idea is supposed to trump social status and everything else, the lack of women in positions of authority stands out.

Various Tech worthies stepped in, none so much as TechCrunch, who points to quite a well known problem for conference organisers:

Every damn time we have a conference we fret over how we can find women to fill speaking slots. We ask our friends and contacts for suggestions. We beg women to come and speak. Where do we end up? With about 10% of our speakers as women.

We won’t put women on stage just because they’re women – that’s not fair to the audience who’ve paid thousands of dollars each to be there. But we do spend an extraordinary amount of time finding those qualified women and asking them to speak.

And you know what? A lot of the time they say no. Because they are literally hounded to speak at every single tech event in the world because they are all trying so hard to find qualified women to speak at their conference.

Unfortunately this is one of those areas where a lot of very "sensitive" people live, so it is virtually impossible to have a rational, fact based conversation (just try and imply that the science continually implies that male and female brains are different for example. ).

Also, people tend to neglect the simple maths. I did a BSc and an MSc in Engineering, and men outnumbered women at least 10:1 in both degrees. It starts there, with the basic ratios skewed like that. It won't get better until that ratio changes.

Also - for what its worth, my own experience from managing, working with and being managed by women is that:

(i) By and large women in any role are (usually) more competent than men in the same role - having a woman boss is usually a terrific experience. But these women don't seem able to see and believe it.

(ii) Women (and I am generalising here) have a different way of learning something. They like to master X before moving on to Y. Men career wildly across the whole piece (hence the use of "career"?), covering more ground initially, but making far more errors in the process. They tend to end up in the same place over time but women are often not given that time, because.....

(iii) Women are less confident in putting themselves forward, even though they are usually at least as competent as the men. I found more than once that I had to work hard to persuade very capable women to do something, whereas far less competent men were clamouring to persuade me they could do it.

And here is the rub - when it comes to the wire, and it's your *ss on the line too, you give the task to someone who has enough confidence and enough competence.
So the question is threefold:

- How does one attract more women into the overall field to start with? Assuming men and women are entrepreneuarial to roughly the same degree, 10: 1 is not a good starting ratio!

- How does one have a rational conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of women, and what sort of opportunities play to their strong suit?

- Why are women more backward about coming forward, and how can that be overcome ?

Until these issues can be honestly addressed, there will always be a problem with women entrepreneurs in IT.

Update - Following a few Twitter exchanges, Shefaly Yogenrda has written a very thoughtful piece in response and JP Rangaswami takes an interesting viewpoint about exclusio.

Paul Allen's company is suing all the websites with deep pockets because he has a patent on how a website is designed (see above) - NYT Digits

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Interval Licensing is suing 11 companies, including tech giants Apple and Google, alleging patent infringement. Below, a look at the patents in the lawsuit.

Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented by Audiovisual Data
What It Is: Obviously, it’s a browser for use in navigating a body of information, with particular application for browsing information represented by audiovisual data. Duh.

Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device
What It Is: The patent describes a tool that gives people news, stock quotes, ads and other information, peripherally to their main activity. One version of the tool makes use of the “unused capacity” of the screen and specifically mentions screen savers and wallpaper as areas where information could be displayed. Another displays content even when the user is busy but does so in an unobtrusive way. There are two patents with the same title listed in the suit, and one is a continuation of the other application.

Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest
What It Is: The writers of this patent should be congratulated for coming up with a title that really does succinctly describe what the patent is for. Basically, it’s a system for sifting through information, evaluating what the user would want to see and then giving an alert when such information pops up.

This patent is the only one in the suit that all the companies are alleged to have violated.

The implications of these are fairly widespread, as these things really are going back to trying to patent crank handles (an abuse of the early days of patents in the UK, which forced early steam engine pioneers to use moon and sun gears). We've built examples of nearly of all these things over the last 5 years or so and knew nothing of Mr Allen's patents, coming up with them quite independently (along with many other people I'm sure) because - surprise, surprise - this is the only real way to do them.

I bet there are loads of people out there with circuit diagrams in powerpoint going back 15 years that look just like this, its just that - silly us - we never thought to patent anything so bloody obvious! In fact surely some of the pre internet systems would have prior art here, never mind the early push systems? As with Facebook trying to trademark English words that are 500 years old, sadly the US system all too often rewards deep pockets, not deep intelligence.

What is needed, apart from a radical shakeup of the US patenting system, is - in my opinion - in patents like these is for the next level down - how they do some of this to be patented, not this level.

Addendum - and that the plaintiffs actually be making something, not just amassing patents and handing out lawsuits