Dave Winer hits the nail on the head with his commentary on this YouTube video of a more representative segment of Rev. Wright’s post-911 sermon:
I guess it’s not surprising that the cable news excerpts gave a very misleading impression. (Next time this happens we must do an immediate fact-check.) … if you compare what Wright said to what they were saying, and why shouldn’t we, I think we’ll find that Wright was a rational and calming alternative to the lunacy that was dominating discourse in the US in the years following 911. And this video was taken mere days after the attacks.The news networks don’t have standing to criticize Wright for his post-911 speech. Let’s dig up some of their oratory from that timeframe and see if we want them involved in our political process in the future.
In his keynote at Mix08 last week, Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie emphasized the growing importance of device and social meshes:
The second scenario we’re working on at Microsoft revolves around the notion of connected entertainment. Building upon this same vision of the device mesh, it’s our aspiration that individuals will only need to license their media once, to organize their subscriptions and collections once, and to use any of their devices to access and enjoy their media, whether on the Web, on the go, in the living room, on the desktop.
And building upon something else I talked about earlier, our vision of the social mesh, we envision each individual having a media-centric or gaming-centric Web presence through which they can express their tastes, interests and affinities. Through which they can interact with others by linking and sharing and ranking and tagging and messaging and notification.
As many of you are already well aware, this vision is being realized today through our progressive enhancements to Xbox live for gaming, through Zune.net and the Zune social for media. Moving forward, more and more and more of our media and entertainment services across Xbox, Zune, and MSN, and across experiences such as Microsoft TV, Media Room, and Media Center will be progressively transformed by this connected entertainment vision.
Listening to Ray really got Marc Canter excited(also, check out this audio interview where Marc describes his Chris Matthews moment). Ozzie is certainly pointing Microsoft in the right direction but falls short for a few reasons. The first is because places and events are missing. Your contact list is just the beginning of your social mesh. In fact, events and the places they form the heart of your social mesh.
Ultimately interoperability is only one part of the device mesh. Things get really interesting when people start making their own, integrating them into the physical world including the human body. Last but not least, server commoditization will push many key portions of the cloud Ozzie envisions off of large corporate servers. Microsoft will carve out a sizable niche but they won’t be a market leader – we’re approaching the end of a cycle. The large companies that thrive as grid utility providers will be more “pure-play” ones like IBM, Sun and even Amazon. As reported earlier, the Second Life Grid is expanding beyond Linden Lab and no matter what virtual world platforms, become most popular, they’re going to need grid resources and virtual goods will be a key component of their business model. Can Ray Ozzie do a Bill Gates and turn Microsoft into a virtual world focused entity?
While the summer olympics may put a spotlight on virtual goods because of China’s huge ambitions, signs of the coming boom are popping up everywhere. The most significant recent news concerns a virtual currency engine called Twofish Elements:
… users are looking for interactive experiences online that are too costly to be paid for by ads alone, so micro-transactions are the logical next step.
… That’s where Twofish Elements comes in, with an offer to help game companies optimize these transactions.
Its software is a plug-and-play platform, and is a sort of combination of web analytics and Paypal for games. Twofish watches what players do and helps create transaction steps to optimize revenue. It handles the micro-payments (even those from players overseas) and protects against the risk of fraud and chargebacks.
Twofish Elements, billed as a “turnkey solution” for companies with online worlds and game networks that want someone to handle in-game currency, micro-transactions and other features that comprise a virtual economy.
It will be interesting to see how open this is and whether Linden Lab will enter this space any time soon. Technology News has a high level overview of virtual currency systems and I’ve rounded up some notable quotes dealing with virtual goods:
the business of selling virtual items that enable internet users to express themselves is booming. Over $2bn is spent on virtual items every year and I don’t think this is a trend to bet against. Disney certainly didn’t with its purchase of Club Penguin, which could be worth up to $700m.
And it was announced yesterday that Paramount has inked a deal with Habbo Hotel to create merchandise for one of Paramount’s upcoming movies.
Probably not all by itself, but this could be an important driver and seems worth watching.
Hoping to jump-start the long foretold 3-D printing revolution, OpenMoko, a maker of open source mobile devices, is offering its phone case CAD files to anyone who wants them.
“We want people to create their own flesh for their phone,” said Steve Mosher, VP of marketing at OpenMoko.
The OpenMoko CAD files have been made available under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license.
In the past, said Mosher, creating a unique plastic part might cost a $100,000. “But today, with desktop manufacturing, you can build parts on your desktop for $3,500,” he said.
A commercial 3-D printer costs a bit more than that: The low-end Z Corp. ZPrinter 310 Plus retails for $19,900. But the open source Fab@Home Project Model 1 costs about $2,300.
The increasing ease with which 3-D parts can be fabricated is often likened to the desktop publishing revolution in the 1980s. But before 3-D printing takes off the way laser printing did, the software and hardware will have to become more affordable still and more intuitive.
